


Whenever I look up, there will be you.

by Cynar



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Far From the Madding Crowd AU, Idiots in Love, Pastoral love, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23415955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynar/pseuds/Cynar
Summary: Headstrong Arya Stark is like no other woman in her times—alone without family and with no intention to marry. Gendry Waters is as alone as Arya, a humble farmer, working to find his way in the world.The two meet and a series of events unravel that will entangle them for years—a reversal of fortunes that they will weather together, and yet apart.Far from the Madding Crowd AU, with liberties.
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 120
Kudos: 92





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> This is a big moment for me, as an avid Gendrya reader whose just been too shy to share any work—and as a person who struggles to finish anything, I'm patting myself on the back here for getting this far. Finally—I'm posting. I could work on this first chunk of the story ad infinitum, but I just needed to let it go and click post. Right now, more than ever I needed a project to dive into. I'm super excited to share and be even more of a part of this talented community which has brought me so much joy. 
> 
> Thank you so much to Yana for subscribing before I'd even published this thing—it gave me such a boost to keep writing knowing there'd be at least one interested reader out there. Far from the Madding Crowd is one of my favourite classics and I've been dying to cast Arya into Bathsheba's headstrong role and Gendry into my beloved, steadfast Mr. Oak. I've taken plot liberties in this AU to set up and explore (future smut warning) their (slow burn!) mutual attraction and relationship in ways the Victorian novel did not! Of course, FFTMC and ASOIF are not my own works, so any similarities and quotes credit the original authors. Please do leave a comment as I would LOVE to know your thoughts—looking forward to starting this journey with you all.

The sheep bleated, but Old George, the almost-retired sheepdog, continued to loll off the back of the wagon. Meanwhile, his protege, the somewhat lacklustre-in-name, (but in name only, for energy sprung from him like a retracted coil),Young George, snapped at the flock’s skinny ankles. Gendry Waters, hat shielding him from the late summer’s still-warm rays, walked alongside, contentedly, dreaming of throwing himself into the grass at the day’s end, perhaps dozing a little as the sky churned into a peachy sunset. He might, should he have any energy left, wander down to the beach and splash in the water to cool off, the Georges were sure to love it, and his weary muscles seemed to ease slightly at the thought of lying buoyant in the sea water. 

Gendry Waters was, it was often said, by the rest of the townspeople, an unusually solitary young man. His guarded nature, and what with him not being from these parts, meant he could never quite graduate from being inscrutable. And so the circular talk continued: Handsome, tall, broad, shame to let that one get lonely. And, it seemed he was coming up in the world, from a landless orphan to a farmer, and better off too, once the 200 sheep he had on loan made their worth in fleeces and lambs. And so, with such idle talk, they kept themselves entertained.

To his credit, Gendry tried his best to fit in—he tended to his sheep, took on odd jobs with his knack for metalwork, went to the trade fairs, occasionally turned up at dances, (where his attendance was always welcomed by the local women, not that you could ever get him to dance) and, more rarely, to church, where he parsed along to the service, even though the harshness of his life so far had not convinced him anything divine would be coming for him. Still, he did not necessarily want for more, and his rise from orphaned boy in the slums of King’s Landing to a humble, farmer, sleeping in his hut with the starry-blanked sky visible from the window, contented him, he thought—fully.

This level-headedness, however, did not mean that he was immune to the follies of love—yes that’s what it would kindle into—ignited when a certain Ms Arya Stark rode through his paddock, straddling a horse like no other women in her day, clad in a burgundy leather riding coat, her brown hair whipping out of its braid in the wind and the scarf that had tied her hair back flying away like a kite behind her. 

___

Arya Stark had been orphaned, in a way, too. Her entire family had been razed down during war-times to a missing sister and an equally absent, illegitimate brother (you’d never hear her stomach anyone calling him a bastard). She had travelled far and wide through Westeros in search of them, taking up odd jobs in the fields, working in taverns or general stores, or, more unbelievably, as a governess to earn her fill. All the while, she kept an ear out for something, anything, but—nothing. Resigned, her travels led her back to Lady Crane, a woman who had taken pity on her for a spell in her youth when she found herself bereft. Arya would repay her kindness and help out on her modest property where she could, tending to the grounds, the harvest and its menagerie of animals—it was a pretty place, not far from the grassy paddocks chiseled their way down to the beach. But she was discontented, try as she might to let her routine lull her into some semblance of normalcy—of belonging—she felt as untethered, as alone, as ever, her temper a quick fuse to burn, a flame that would burn on the lowest of kindling.

Being a newcomer, newer than Mr Waters even, it had been impossible to escape the judgement of the townsfolk: Untamed’, they’d whisper. ‘Ruined’ they’d say of her, citing not only her fall from wealth, but the way she rode a horse, straddling it like a man. Yes, it was the very event we saw Gendry Waters witness that morning as Arya approached the walking path arched by a low network of brambles and eased herself down to to lie on length of the horse’s back and pass beneath—lithe as spring branch, and untamed, yes, but in way that made had made his breath catch in awe. It was the beginning of a series of encounters that would make him think of her like he never had anyone else.

____

Gendry sighted this mysterious new stranger again, two days later, not long after dawn, emerging in the distance from the cow-shed, one arm flung outwards to balance the effort of carrying the full pail in the other. He, more like a schoolboy, than a man of 27 years—ran to his shepherd’s hut, retrieved the scary he’d gone after, and strode evenly, his breath levelling out to a respectable rhythm, to take his chance. 

Her hair was tied back by a different, patterned kerchief and her cheeks were rosy with her efforts. In the streaky morning light, he thought her rather like a milkmaid in pastoral painting—a flushed skinned, dark-haired beauty swathed in deep blue. 

“Miss...miss? If I may, I believe you’re missing this scarf,” said Gendry, striding towards her purposefully, eyes helpless tracking down momentarily where her dress was unbuttoned slightly at the chest. 

Arya (though he did not yet know this to be her name) was not one for attracting male attention—her life had taught her to be wary of the other sex, and this wariness had turned to disdain, coupled with a lack on intimate experience, she considered them entirely different creatures, ones she wouldn’t tolerate. As she had grown into her looks, she took special care: When she dressed she never abided by the low-cut styles around the chest, sometimes she—to the great shock of the townspeople—even wore trousers. Today, in her exertion milking the cow, she had opened a few buttons of her dress down to her chest, leaving a long sliver of skin bare.

Arya caught Gendry’s swift gaze down to her chest—and quickly registered it as the first strike against his name. She never missed a single, intimation, glance, or twitch.  _ Men _ , she thought, disdainfully, drawing herself up to her full, if modest, height.

“How long have you had that for? I should have needed it at the mill yesterday” she replied sharply.

“Yes I know,” he said somewhat lamely. She had sighted him the day before on the field, a tall, sturdy figure in the distance. 

“How? You don’t even know me—how could you presume my movements?” Arya Stark wore defense as other women did ribbons in their hair. It was one of the particular reasons she never lasted long in any governess posts—and only half as long at a tavern, always leaving the wooden surfaces of the long tables pockmarked by her dagger, thrust judiciously between the fingers of a too-touchy patron.

“I saw you, riding yesterday beneath the brambles—and I saw the, uh, scarf fly away...as it were…so I…,’ he trailed off. 

One, of a few, detriments to whiling away so many hours solitary in his pastures, lost in his own thoughts, meant Gendry often fumbled through his words, giving the accidental impression of a certain dimness—which was rather the opposite of his ambition in this particular conversation. The beginnings of a blush began to creep up his neck, though you wouldn’t see quite rise through the golden complexion the hours outside had impressed upon him—one that Arya would later notice, framed his deep blue eyes rather like the sun itself, in an inversion of the blue summer’s day. But now was not a moment for fondness. 

“You admit then, to spying on me?” She said defensively, heat rising more visibly to her face that she’d been observed in what she had supposed a private moment—she knew what they said of her in town, this freewheeling, newcomer woman, without a family, prospects, and the very example of the perils of singledom.

Gendry averted his eyes awkwardly to a point beyond her shoulder, not wanting to deepen her discomfort, but not before pocketing away the sight first in his memory—for she was lovely in her simmering passion, even if he was the object of her ire.

‘Spying? No, I was tending to my sheep.”

“I take it you’re Farmer Waters then.”

“That or thereabouts,” he replied.

“Well, good day to you, farmer, and mind you don’t follow me. I’ll take that back now,” she said stiffly, snatching her scarf that presently dangled from his hand that was outstretched, limply, in the space between the pair.

___

Their interaction certainly would not seem to lay foundation for love, and though Gendry was certainly no green boy—he found himself completely bewitched by this stranger. There was no tangible reason, no exact evidence from their limited interaction, but his mind grew busy with daydreams of their future, conjuring the most fulsome depiction of this woman he thought of as a kindred outsider. For all the aspersions the townsfolk cast on her, he found her warmed to her more.

___

As Arya did her rounds one evening, she sniffed at the air, detecting smoke. Looking around for its source, she sighted plumes in the distance, escaping out of the sides of Farmer Water’s small hut. A sheepdog was bounding towards her, barking to get her attention before rounding back in the distance, back to the hut in question. She’d seen huts smoked out before and set off in a run, reaching his door and wrenching it open. Farmer Water she found him lying on his bed, spluttering at the stifling smoke. She tugged him off his bed, using all her might to drag him outside where she placed his head in her lap, splashing water on his face to rouse him properly. It was then that she realised he was shirtless, the water running in rivulets down a tanned, sculpted chest. Her eyes followed their path downwards, before his coughing shifted her attention back to the matter at hand, shaking her head. The smoke must be getting to me, she thought. 

__

Gendry woke painfully, his lungs full of smoke. Unsure what had landed him in the present situation, he felt certain he was dreaming again when he sighted the face above him—for it was her. Her hands were cradling his face, which she’d presently doused with water. 

“You’ve saved my life,” he gasped eventually, blinking water out of his eyes.

She didn’t answer his question, instead charged onwards: “You must have forgotten to open the slides after you lit a fire, why’d you go and do that for?”    
  


“It wasn’t on purpose,” he mumbled, throat dry. “S’pose I was tired.”

“Well, it was stupid.”

“Yes...” he agreed dazedly. He felt the warmth of her lap beneath his head and groggily tried to set his mind to holding onto the fleeting sensation of being so near to her. 

“How can I thank you…” He moved to grasp her hand, hesitating slightly before enveloping it in his larger one.

“...so soft,” she thought she heard him whisper, before he continued with more force “...and I don’t even know your name.”

“Well, I shan’t tell you—truth be told I don’t like the sound aloud.” said Arya, for it made her think of the past, which brought her to the present, where she was very much alone. “No need for thanking me, Mr Waters, I just used my common sense. Ask my Lady Crane if you want to find out,” and with that, she ducked out of the hut, calling out behind her, “Be well. Mind you keep your slides open next time.”

____

Farmer Waters was becoming a familiar presence each day—sighted from afar, skirting the flock of sheep, as she made her way back to the house with a pail of milk. Sometimes he would tip his hat at her. She’d either dodge his gaze, wave curtly, or when she was feeling particularly buoyant, tip her imaginary hat back at him.

One evening the same sheepdog that alerted her of the smoked out hut came bounding towards her. She thought of shooing him off, but, intrigued, followed the dog as he raced towards, rounding back to her every so often, leading her to the place where the green fields bet the sandy bay. When they approached, she saw a figure splashing in the shallow waves with an identical dog. It was, unmistakably, Farmer Waters, trousers rolled up to mid-calf and chest bare. In the golden evening sunlight he glistened, rays refracting off the water running down the sculpted planes of his chest. Arya would never admit to herself the indulgent seconds she spent drinking in the sight.

Instead, as she approached, she shouted into the warm breeze: “I’m returning your dog to you. Or rather, he brought me here. But it seems this time, it’s a false alarm. Unless you’re at risk of drowning and can’t swim?”

He rose slowly and turned around to face her. “Well, it’s not the same dog. That one by you is Young George—doesn’t want no training, he’s a wild one. This here is Old George, now he’s a good boy, measured, calm, knows his place.”

“Seems like Young George is a man after my own heart,” said Arya, bending down to ruffle the sheepdog’s mane.

“Hm,” was all he said, hands slug low into the pockets of his trousers, before beginning again: “So—Arya Stark…,” he said emphasizing each syllable of her name.

“Ugh, don’t you dare say it aloud Mr Waters,” she said running towards the shallow depths and kicking off her boots. She hitched up her dress, wading into the water, splashing water in his direction.”

“Hey! Why not—Arya—’tis a lovely name.”

“It’s the Arya Stark part I don’t like. I can’t conscience the thought that I’m the only one left…the last of my kind.” She didn’t know why she was sharing this hard-earned fact about herself. Blame the wind, the balminess, the way he was glowing, like an illusion in the light, or the soothing repetition of the sea. Her guard was down as it rarely was. 

“Ah, that I can understand. Don’t much like being a Waters and all that comes with it. So, please, just called me Gendry. 

Arya was already running through the shallow waters, away from him. But she glanced back to look at him, a small smile playing about her lips. 

“There’s ways to get a new name you know, milady,” he said, the suggestiveness not unintentional.

  
“Ach—don’t call me that either!”

_____

The cow was going to dry up and with it, Arya’s walks down to the milk shed—he knew it, just like he knew the hour the sun would rise, or when a rain would blow in—and he set this date as his goal to make his move.

Gendry Waters was the kind of man who kept a watch, but never looked at it, so in tandem was he to the cues of nature around him. On the second last day—he decided to take his chance. He washed, tried to arrange his hair into something acceptable, and put on his best clothes. He fetched the bleating little lamb and strode towards Lady’s Crane’s house.

“Lady Crane. Is Ms Stark home? I should like to pay her a visit.”

  
“Oh, Arya, heavens knows where that one ever is, but she should be back shortly. Come sit in the solar and we’ll wait for her.”

He tied up the lamb he bought for Arya at the doorstep, it was the little runt of the flock that she was so fond of, running over to play with it when she strolled over to him in the fields.

Seated in her modest rooms, Lady Crane pressed him, sly-eyed “What are your intentions then Mr. Waters?”

“I-I wish to ask Ms Stark—Arya—for her hand in marriage. I believe she finds me tolerable and I’ve almost paid off the flock and… I’m in love with her.” There he’d said it, rather clumsily, but there it was. 

“That girl? Marriage? Mr. Waters I know your hut was smoked out, but are you all there in the head? I know she’s a beauty, and you’d be a good match with those looks of yours, and yes I’m not forgetting your character too boy, but that wild girl will settle for naught,” she huffed.

Arya, who had arrived home, cautiously approached the solar and the sound of a deep voice accompanying the familiar tones of Lady Crane. She had overheard his proposal. Daft idiot, she thought. Why’d he have to ruin whatever this was between them? Impulsive as alway, barged into the room.

“Mr Waters...Gendry...that’s a terrible idea.”

Faced by two women in total defiance of his proposal, his heart racing in devastation, he said meekly, “So be it. I have your word then. I’ll leave your lamb by the door, I brought him for you. Won’t last the winter unless he has extra care.” He left the room, red-faced, not daring to look at them, his gaze downcast.

As he strode quickly up the hill to—well, he hadn’t decided his next move after this total ruination—he heard her calling his name, “Gendry, Gendry—stop will you.” 

  
Reluctantly he did, but he did not turn around to face her. 

“Gendry—I didn’t say no...exactly—it’s just that, I’m not the marrying type! I’d be far too wild for you... you’d grow to hate me. I have no money, no prospects, no family. You can do far better than me...so don’t think don’t it any longer, do I have your word?”

“What?” he said, finally turning around to face her. Arya, I could never hate you and I would never change you. It’s just that I thought, perhaps, I-I could be your family. See I didn’t come from happy beginnings myself, and I know life’s not been kind to you. I don’t have much to offer you, but the farm’s almost mine. We could be happy, in a year I could probably afford a piano—and build a larger cottage—think of it, we could make a new family of our own...”

“Gendry, no,” she said sadly. “You would come to despise me. I can’t be some man’s wife content to play his piano and tend to his children. That’s just not me. Any lady would be lucky to have you, but it’s not me you’re looking for.”

He broke her gaze and closed his eyes slowly, head hung. She couldn’t help but reach out towards him, her hand moving to cup his face, tilting his chin towards her. With her other hand she grabbed his fist, clenched by his side, and kissed the back of it. He felt the warmth through his veins.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t be that person.”

Gendry exhaled long and slow, his chest shrinking inwards as his life did too, dreams fizzling out like seafoam and sinking into the shore. Alone, again.

__

It was not long after this doomed proposal that two fateful things happened changing each of their lives for better and for worse. 

Arya received a letter from her Uncle Blackfish’s estate in Riverrun. He had died and it seemed, left everything to her, the only of his relations left to be roaming Westeros. She would be the lady of his sprawling farmlands, she would have her own money, her own purpose, her own freedom to do as she pleased. Buoyed by her new chance at life, and if she was honest with herself, a chance to escape all the awkwardness Gendry had created—or was it her? She did what she’d come to know best. She packed up her things, setting off on another journey without looking back at what was or what could’ve been. Without fanfare and without a farewell, she left.

Gendry’s fate was not so kind. He awoke well before dawn when the sky was still inky, by the bells of the flock ringing far too rapidly for this time, rising to a crescendo before stopping completely. Something was amiss. He ran outside, Old George at his heels, as he made his way through the lashing wind, towards the specks of light in the distance he knew to be Young George’s mottled coat. The dog yapped at him, prancing about as if looking for a reward. As Gendry got closer he sighted the tear in the fencing, saw the tail end of a sheep slip through, with the foolhardy sheepdog yapping at its heels. But it wasn’t through, it was down, for the fencing skirted the lofty cliffs that dove straight below to the shore. He tore into a run, pulse thundering in his ears, not believing it until he saw it—the whole flock, arranged like a hazy mosaic on the beach, as quiet as death itself.

___

_Author's note: *long exhale* So, if you made it this far, how'd I'd do? Would love to hear from you in the comments! And, if anyone could give me pointers, what's the best way to share my work within the community?_


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate deals them both very different hands—but it also brings them back to each other, their good fortunes reversed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for all your lovely comments—it was so heartening to have such a warm response to the first chapter I've ever put up here! My apologies for the little wait—I'd hoped to have it sooner but I got a little stuck laying the foundations for the upcoming storylines—if you read the books you'll know some of these head spaces are going to be a task to pull off—so my confidence wavered a little. But, I persisted, and I'll keep persisting. It's a slow burn, I know, but name a better way to keep yourself warm!
> 
> Hope you're all taking care of yourselves, wherever you are—I've got pages and pages written after this so an update will soon follow. Thanks for reading, look forward to hearing from you again.

At the farm in Riverrun, Arya felt a lightness she hadn’t known for longer than she cared to remember. Her present now oriented itself towards a clearer future, the threat of destitution—though never to be forgotten—far less pernicious when she knew the exact bed she would wake up this day and the next, when she knew that her income was secure and her standing as a single woman, too. The good fortune of her position was not lost on her. 

The farmhouse was a little run down—but light and airy inside and full of recoverable charm—the crops a little skinny, and yes, the workers rowdy, but it was hers. In the evenings she’d roam the property, wanting to know its secrets in the hope that with this shared knowledge, she'd be a worthy custodian. Whenever she passed the sheep in the fields, hedged by Riverrun’s eponymous streams, unlike the coast grazing plots on Lady Crane’s lands, she couldn’t help but think of _him_ —imagining him strolling over to her with sun gleaming low in the sky behind him, framing him like a vision as it always had seemed to, a dog or two at his heels. She hadn’t said goodbye—she’d never been any good at them.

The thought usually prompted another, and she found herself picking at the loose threads of fate, wondering what would have happened if she’d accepted Gendry’s proposal. Would he have let her run the farm? Would he have taken it for himself? Would they have done it together? 

No, she was sure he would have been kind—but still her lands would have then been his more than hers, as the law permitted. She felt a peculiar twinge in her chest as she pictured his face nonetheless—unable to stem a flurry of gilded images: Them riding on horseback through the property, her splashing him in the streams, him helping her make the evening’s rounds. Mayhaps they could have been a happy pair, like she’d only known from her parents?

He hadn’t quite been her friend, or had he? Arya shook her head forcibly, there was no point dwelling. She’d been alone for so long now and with the hand her life had dealt her, she thought survival was a thing best done alone.

__________

Though, that wasn’t all the story: For the first time since childhood, at Riverrun she had found a kind of friendship. Meera Reed, who came from a local family of eccentrics, had been sent to work at the farm for her uncle when her family came upon hard times, just some months prior. Meera was a young woman of many talents—an excellent conversationalist, musical, good at making commands to humans or animals, and had a particular knack archery—but these did not extend to the finer points of household duties in her current position as a maid.

Arya, seeing her struggle on a few occasions, had sat her down and quizzed her.

“You don’t need to be my maid,” Arya had said. “I wouldn’t know the first thing to order of you. No, I’d have you be my companion. If you can promise me to be truthful—to tell me when the men speak of me behind my back, to help me run this farm with your knowledge of it, then you’ll always have a place here.” 

“Oh, thank you!” cried Meera. “I only switched because Bella ran off—gods rest her soul.” There had been a young house maid who had grown up at the farm, by the name of Bella Rivers, but she had been missing for some weeks now since before Arya arrived. It was all anyone could talk about, and despite their efforts, they had yet to track her down.

And so it happened that Meera was her steadfast ally, filling in the family trees and social circles of those who worked at the farm—from Hot Pie, a cook whose skills seem to belie his young years, cheerful Alys the scullery maid, and Jeyne the housekeeper, all the way over to the more raucous motley crew of farmhands from earnest Lommy to lairy Anguy. The community extended to the fringe of the farmlands, where mother hen Marya worked at the malthouse in, along with her husband Davos. She liked them all well enough—all but one— Bronn, the questionable bailiff of the farm who gave off a constant reek of ale, was prone to speaking over her, and casting lecherous looks her way. He would not be escaping her watchful eye.

  
She knew it would take time to gain the community’s trust, but she was content in her confidence that she, a young woman who had survived worse, could prove them wrong.

__________

Conversely, Gendry had been travelling on foot to look for work, his body aching from sleeping on the ground, his stomach full of wanting and his mind laden with thoughts of a now shapeless future. As the lands rebuilt themselves after years of war, the chance of work was skint. Wherever he stopped, he asked after their flocks, putting himself forward for a shepherd’s position or taking a gamble at farm bailiff for extra coin, but as he’d just lost his holdings, a fact he in his earnestness wouldn’t hide—he failed to paint a promising picture to a stranger. 

Still, the farmers could see his build well enough, and they took pity sending away a young man in his prime. They wished him well on his journey, voicing their hopes that he’d find work elsewhere. The last farmer had let him sup at his dinner table as he passed through—recommending he hitch a ride to Riverrun. Word had it the farm had finally changed hands after lying dormant while the will of the late owner took effect. Mayhaps there was a chance there as they started anew. It was said to be managed by a young woman, the weathered farmer had scoffed—so it might be a fool’s errand. But Gendry was unperturbed by this. He’d make his way there all the same—and hitched a ride on the back of a wagon headed in the farm’s direction.

Once he was within sight of the farm, he found some soft ground by thicket of trees to kip under for the night—he could see no forebodings of rain, the air was crisp and dry and promised warmth the next morn too. Come dawn, he would make his way over and ask for work. 

He lay down on his greatcoat, settling himself in for the night, breathing deeply. It was then, during the moments when he hovered on the threshold of consciousness, not quite wakeful and not quite dreaming, that he wondered where Arya had got to. He had hoped, in the days after his fumbled proposal, that she might change her mind, but she had left the farm suddenly one day, without any farewell. In any case, everything for him had gone to waste after that. He’d lost the loan he’d taken for the sheep, sold the hut, and moved on to look for work, not wanting to stay a minute longer and remember what had been and what now wouldn’t come to be.

Truly, he was thankful now that she had said no, for he was not sure how he could have lived through the shame of bringing both of them to ruin. He now took her refusal as a blessing and to be true, it had not been what she wanted. Still, he kindled an image of her to keep him company, for there was, and perhaps always would be, affection for her—she was still strangely faultless in his mind’s confabulation of her.

Sleep did come easily to him and some time later, he was roused by the bite of smoke in the air. He had not lit a fire that night to keep him warm, he hadn’t needed it. Raising his head to survey his surroundings, his eyes settled on smoke billowing from the roof of the barn at Riverrun. Flames licked upwards hungrily—it was on fire. Unthinkingly, he sprung up, adrenaline fighting against his somnambulance, and made off towards the farm at a sprint.

The farmyard was unthinkably still— “Fire! Fire!” yelled Gendry hoarsely into the ether. He looked around wildly for help, reaching for a hoe, fetching a pail of water, and tying his kerchief tightly about his face he climbed up a ladder that was positioned against the barn, the sounds of shouting emerging from behind him. Once at the top of the ladder, his face burning already at the intensity, he splashed water, shouting an order down to below to fetch him more, throwing the bucket to be caught and refilled. He took the hoe to the thatched roof, hacking away what burned from the untouched reeds, and beating the flames into nothingness, his brute strength and determination hinging his success. More had gathered below to offer help and join him on the rooftop. As he worked, sweat ran down him, and his breaths shortened in an effort to block the acrid air from entering his lungs—until the fire was put out with all their efforts. He collapsed slightly against the thatched roof before ascending to the ground, to the sound of cheering.

When his feet were back on solid ground he keeled over, hands resting on his knees for support, coughing. 

A hand moved to clap him on the back. “Who the hell are ye? Ye’ve saved us!” The man was old enough to be his father, greys mottling his beard—faint scrapes of Fleabottom audible in his voice. 

Gendry couldn’t yet form words, his throat parched from his efforts. The older man, seeing he was struggling, went to fetch him water, returning with a bucket and soothing words—“Take ye time, lad”. Gendry cupped his hands into the water, drinking haphazardly before splashing himself with water to cool his skin. 

“Milady, this is he who saved ye farm,” he heard the man say.

“Thank you Davos—I can’t thank you all enough,” said a voice, its speaker still shrouded in the darkness—but a sound so familiar Gendry knew himself to be hallucinating. 

“I’ll leave ye t' thank ‘im. I need t' clear up this ruckus,” he replied, parting, as the figure grew closer to Gendry.

The voice rang out in front of him—“Gendry? Is that you?,” gasped—Arya. It _was_ her. He could not make sense of it, bone-tired as he was. 

“What are you doing so far from Norcombe Hill? Are you hurt?” she had come closer, to touch his jaw and tilt his face to check for ailments, picking up his hands and turning them over in hers. The sensation of her skin on his seemed to heat him more than the flames had. 

“M’ fine, milady,” said Gendry, dropping his head slightly. “Been through worse. Put it this way, times have changed and I find myself now a humble shepherd looking for work. I understand, now the farm is yours. You’re the lady here then? I wouldn’t have disturbed your peace had I known. It's just that I was settling in for the night when I saw the barn ablaze.”

“Gendry—no—I’m so sorry,” Arya gasped her hand moving to cover her mouth momentarily in shock.

“...I hope our reversal in fortunes does not cause you any shame,” she said, looking stricken, up at him.

“Not at all, milady. You deserve this as well as any,” he replied in earnest. 

“And as for work you shall have it, I’m the one that’s in your debt for saving the barn. How can I thank you enough? If you go down the path to the Malthouse Inn, ask Marya to prepare you lodgings under my orders. And please, eat too. Have whatever you like, it’s yours,” Arya rambled, nerves ablaze with him conjured so dramatically before her. 

“There’s no debt, milady, if you remember, I owe you my life—and by fire too as fate would have it. But I thank you for your kindness,” her face warmed slightly at his mention of the past. 

“Please Gendry, just call me Arya.”

“Well you can’t deny you truly are milady now,” he said, chuckling to himself, before it brought on a bout of coughing. 

“Here,” said Arya, bringing the pail back up to him, eyes swimming with concern. “Drink.”

__________

_Two days later_

“You will have heard the rumours and now I’d like to formally announce it—Bailiff Bronn has been dismissed from the farm, and this month’s wages stripped of him. Not only was he caught stealing four sacks of barley, he was nowhere to be found when the barn was up in flames. Please heed this as a warning to anyone who crosses the farm, who thereby crosses you, and who crosses me,” said Arya—and despite her age, despite her sex, the burliest man in the room wouldn’t have dared to scorn her at the moment, so fierce was she in her conviction.

  
“I know there is much talk about who will replace him, and to that, I can give you an answer—I intend to manage the farm myself,” said Arya measuredly, and small gasps of disbelief escaped throughout the room.

“I know you were used to having someone much older, and no less, a man as your master, but now things are changed. I know I have to earn our trust. But I can tell you this: I promise to be up before you wake. I promise to be in the fields before you’ve broken your fast. I promise to restore the farm to the finest in these lands. My aim is to astonish you all.”

“Now, I’ll tally your wages. I believe we are all here but Bella Rivers. Has there been any word?”

“No Miss,” said Marya. “Though we’ve got Lommy and Anguy and Beric riding out across the Riverlands on the morrow to find word of her. There was talk of her running off with some solider and there’s to be a parade up at The Twins. Mayhaps we’ll find word.”

“Thank you,” said Arya. “And one more thing, before we begin. Mr Waters? You wish to stay on is that correct?” To the outsider, there was no intimation of the history between them, so they seemed perfect strangers.

  
“Yes, milady, I would,” he said bowing his head slightly, his shoulders slightly rounded where a man of his stature would usually hold them square.

“Well, we’ll be glad to have you. It’ll be an honour after your efforts with the barn. We are much in your debt," the warmth of Arya's smile reached her eyes—and his.


	3. Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a moment of silliness—Arya, naive in matters of the heart, begins to learn the spiraling repercussions a single act can sow.

“So tell me, who was that proud blonde man in the corner? He was the only one who didn’t come to test our grain.” Arya and Meera were alighting their carriage, having returned to Riverrun from town. Arya had wanted to go on horseback, but Meera had convinced her otherwise if they wanted to be taken seriously, despite the small matter of their sex. Wanting the best for the farm, Arya conceded to venture out in a carriage befitting the type of ‘gentleman’ farmer she was forced to emulate. Undoubtedly, she’d be made a mockery of all the same, but she could try.

“Ooh,’ said Meera, a glint in her eye. “That was your neighbour Mr Dayne. The proudest gentleman-farmer you’ll find in the Riverlands. Unmarried—not for want of women trying. They say he was once jilted by his true love. It seems he’s taken it upon himself to make women feel of no consequence since.”

“Ugh, he sounds a bore,” Arya, who was feeling particularly bristly, despite the success of the day. She was tired of men, tired of being looked at as an object, and tired of having to work twice as hard—against prices and prejudices—to sell her grain at the town hall. She sat down heavily in her study, intending to file away the invoices.

  
“A rich bore though,” said Meera. “Still, it doesn’t stop them chasing him. What about you, any marriage proposals in your time?”, she said, settling into an armchair across from her, propping her chin up on her elbows. 

“A man did ask me to marry him once,” said Arya vaguely, her hands stilling from riffling through papers.

“And did you love him?”

“I’m not sure. But I rather liked him.”

“I take it you said...no?” exclaimed Meera, trailing off with a lengthy ‘o’.

“Yes.”

“Oh milady—like might as well be love. Imagine, to have the choice! No one’s ever sodding asked me, mind,” said Meera, melodramatically swiping at her brow.

“Well, with your talk of true love...you’ve reminded me. I need to write the Valentine’s card for Jeyne’s little Mycah.” 

The young boy was always following her around like a stray, and since he’d recovered from a nasty fever, Arya intended to slip some coin in an envelope to lighten his mood. He was a mischievous little thing, but she’d found a soft spot for him. The card itself was Meera’s idea of a practical joke. Arya wouldn’t have remembered the day were it not for her—but apparently it was a sort of tradition to send them around at the farm. The longer she was there, the longer she was inspired to be the person to bring people together, like her parents had done at Winterfell. With a proper purpose for the first time in years, she began to think of what she was doing as acts in their legacy—she felt they might be proud of her.

She was interrupted from her thoughts by Meera, a mischievous glint in her eye: “I think I’ll send one to a certain Mr. Waters. May I, milady?,” the latter word fell off her tongue in an exaggeration of Gendry’s accent.

Arya narrowed her eyes, “And why would you need my permission?”

“Because he’s so handsome. So very handsome and strong and so clearly devoted to you. Don’t think I’ve missed the looks. And that’s both of you,” said Meera, who was now crouched down to stoke the fire.

Arya glared at the back of Meera’s head. “I’ve not the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she said tersely.

“Alright, if you say so. Don’t worry, I’m joking about sending a Valentine to Gendry, obviously, he’s far too earnest for me. Alys will probably be daft enough to send him one even though he pays her no mind. I might chance Anguy, he’s always up for a laugh. Or should I taunt Lommy, the greenest of them all…?” she rattled on. 

“Do what you want…I can’t say I want to pay the holiday any mind.” said Arya, busying herself by dipping the nib of her pen in the inkwell on her desk, trying to stop her brain from locating any instances of Gendry and Alys together. She was sure there was nothing going on there.

“I’m a young, single woman, with no prospects and nothing other than a fabulous wit and an underappreciated knack for archery. Let me indulge a bit of wanton passion. ”

“Do as you like, I’m not sending an actual Valentine, Meera. The last thing I want is a man’s attention, let me tell you,” she huffed.

“Oh, come on, act your age for once! It’s fun to toy with the dimmer sex’s hearts, us women can do with the upper hand once in a while. Truly, I dare you send one to Gendry. You deserve a bit of fun.”

“No! He doesn’t deserve that. He’s far too kind to be toyed with,” hissed Arya, her chest twisting at the thought of leading along someone as pure of heart as Gendry—even though her pulse sped up, oddly, at the thought of him opening a card from her. But, no.

“Well, suit yourself. Alright then, let’s go for the unkind. What of snooty Mr Dayne? It’ll be a lark!”

Would she could turn back the clocks, Arya would think later. For in her folly, in that rare moment of girlish levity, such as she’d never known, she had paid the consequences to her rash actions no mind at all. 

______

It could not be said that anyone had attempted to woo Ned Dayne by way of a mystery Valentine card—women generally preferred to be more forthright with him—despite his own rather withdrawn, even timid, nature. Naturally, he was perplexed at it—and shielded by his degree of naive pomposity, he did not, at first, fully consider the notion that it was done in jest.

Micah, the son of Jeyne, Riverrun’s housekeeper, had dropped the offending card at the door of Mr Dayne’s stately manor. He had not meant to announce his arrival—Miss Reed has told him to be stealthy—but the laughter that sprung forth at the thought of his errand meant Mr Dayne caught sight of him out of the window, seizing his image as sped away down the path.

The envelope was emblazoned with a wax stamp, into which the words “Marry me” had been etched. Inside, the rather formulaic message was written, exaggeratedly cursive: “Roses are red, violets are blue, carnations sweet, and so are you.”

Mr Dayne held the card in his hand, mulling it over. At present, he had but one clue: Riverrun. A curious matter—he had not paid the new mistress mind, and could not fathom otherwise who the author might have been, but he would get to the bottom of it.

  
  


In the weeks that followed Ned Dayne looked for clues everywhere. His larger, more stately property neighboured the other farm, it was easy enough for him one day, as he went about his duties, to sight the scrappy young boy who’d delivered the message. 

“Micah, young man. Come here, will you?” he called out. The boy had the gall to look askance, but walked over all the same. “I spied you the other day delivering a rather curious letter to my door. I presume you’ve been sworn to secrecy, but how’s this—I’ll pay you five dragons if you tell me who wrote it?”

  
“Five dragons, Mr Dayne!” exclaimed Micah in disbelief. “That’s a ripper of a deal. I’ll tell yeh, ser. It was Miss Stark and Miss Reed. But Miss Stark’s the one who wrote it, see.” 

The next time he was in town with his bailiff to fix prices for the next harvest, he asked another farmer, conspiratorially. “So what do they say of the ‘Farmer’ Stark—is she a fine woman?” He took special care to examine Ms Stark, noting her steely grey eyes, long, braided hair, and spirited way of talking.

“She’s a precocious, spirited woman that’s for sure. But one look at that face and figure and you quite forget it!” he had chuckled, slyly. So she _was_ considered a beauty, a rare sort of one too. He was satisfied with the answer that this fact was widely accepted. 

He had gone over to introduce himself, meeting her formally. He had found her rather a maiden—for she had blushed profusely upon meeting him, which he took in his favour. Focused as she was on her farm, he did not think her running after young men and her reaction pleased him.

Mr Dayne found it was all painting a rather compelling portrait—one he was imagining the hazy form of their union in.

______

The cold wind whipped about Gendry’s face as he made his way to the Malthouse, two lambs slung over his shoulders. They’d been birthed too early and the barn was too drafty to keep them warm, so he intended to cosy them up by Marya’s roaring fire to give them a helping hand. He made his way in, shaking a light dusting of snow off his head and ducking under the doorway, to find the workers gathered round the table, ales in hand.

Gendry’s stoic, hard-working attitude and his dramatic entry into the farm as its saviour, had made those at the farm think of him as something of a leader. But it was not that he himself presumed any rise in his station, nor made himself out to be a figure of authority—he was happy to lose himself in the work, there was much to be done and, being fond of his employer as he was, he was content in his purpose. As luck would have had it, he could not have ended up at a better place. He had a comfortable room at the Malthouse, more warm meals than he’d ever had in his life, and most days, he and Arya spoke, walking through the grounds, she quizzed him on the sheep, on the seasons, on harvests.

The farm folk all thought him a peculiarly wisened young man—he had a pocket watch, but always looked to the sky for the time, a quirk Arya found as annoying (because there was no logic to carrying a watch one did not use) as she did intriguing (it was a kind of jealousy, she longed to be as attuned the natural world as he was). Gendry always seemed so acutely sure of himself, where she still felt irresolute—and he was becoming a kind of mentor, always kind and never domineering, as she took the reigns of the farm.

“Ah, there’s the lad, still a’workin,” smiled Davos good naturedly. 

Gendry had already strode to the fireplace where he gently set down the lamb, tucking a thick woolen blanket around them. Alys moved from the table to sit by the babes, cooing at them softly.

“They wouldn’t survive the night in the barn, so I’ll watch them here tonight if that’s alright with ye Marya,” he said. 

“Course, dear,” she said warmly, eyes shining.

“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, she should be making ye bailiff, sensible lad like you,” said Grenn. 

“I’ll say. Insolent lass to think she can run the farm herself. Well if I thought I’d have a chance I’d kiss that pretty little mouth of hers and make meself farmer—show her how it’s done, like,” said Anguy.

“Watch yourself now,” warned Davos, as Gendry glared daggers at Anguy. 

“Ah, no harm, no harm, I know our mistress only has eyes for our and Gendry and his big ah...intellect,” drawled Anguy, who’d clearly had one too many. 

Pip and Grenn guffawed while Marya tutted and Davos shook his head. Gendry was by no means a violent man, but the comment had made his blood boil—half out of respect for Arya and half out of the shame that it _wasn’t_ true. 

“You best watch your mouth talkin’ about the mistress like that—or it’ll be my fist will be making a mess of yours.” The relative intimacy between Gendry and the mistress had not escaped the notice of the farm’s community—and Gendry’s defensiveness served to only goad them further.

“You’d best heed his word Anguy,” said Davos, sternly.

______

A few days later, as Gendry lingered in the paddocks over the frosty sheep, a scarf pulled tightly about his neck to shield him from the cold, a voice called out to him from up on the hill.

“Good day.” It was Mr Dayne, dressed in a greatcoat and boots—the picture of a gentleman with his curled moustache and walking stick, not that he needed one, at his age. “Very fine flock you have here. They’re looking much healthier than a few moons ‘afore.”

“Come—I’ve two questions for you.” Gendry resented the way men of his standing spoke to the likes of his, every sentence uttered as a summon. But he gritted his teeth and complied, as was expected of him.

“Tell me—is there news of Bella Rivers? I knew her mother while she lived.”

“Haven’t heard ‘awt. A couple of the lads rode out about a moon ago to The Twins, but no luck. There’s talk of her running off with a soldier, dunno who though.”

“Heavens,” was all Dayne replied, nervously blotting the side of his face with his kerchief. Though he was older than Gendry by few years, the wave in his flaxen hair, softness of features, and his nervous way of talking made him seem his junior.

“And—here’s the second. How well do you know your mistress?” Ned Dayne had heard rumours of their special fondness.

  
“Well as much as anyone can know their employer, Ser,” he answered curtly.

“Do you believe this to be her handwriting?” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and proffered Gendry the Valentines card.

  
Gendry noted that it was more exaggeratedly cursive than Arya’s usual hand, but it could well have been—though he wondered what would possess her to send what was so clearly a jape, and he found pitied Dayne, who clearly had not ascertained that. 

“It bears a likeness, but ‘tis far more cursive than hers, you see, Ser,” said Gendry curtly, conceding to himself that t’was not really a lie. 

“Ah, I see. Well, please do keep this between us—gentleman’s honour, you know,” said Dayne, patting Gendry awkwardly on the shoulder and leaving him in the paddock, bewildered, a strange kind of anxiety settling over him.

______

Spring came—bringing with it rains that transformed the fields with shoots of new life. Gendry found himself waking every morning with new zeal, roused by the scent of dew and warmed by the soft sunshine.

The sheep were now fat with fleece and so the time of year arrived for shearing. For this purpose, all the workers at Riverrun had congregated at the stream to ready the sheep— leading them through the pens and through the stream of cool water to wash their pelts. 

Dressed in boots up to his knees, breeches and a light blue denim shirt, a kerchief, as ever, about his neck, Gendry led the efforts, stood in the stream, hauling a sheep and passing it through a procession of men and women. 

“Ms Arya’s here now, so you all best be doing your best work,” shouted Meera goodnaturedly as the two of them sauntered down the hill to the stream. Arya was dressed in a sturdy, navy blue dress, her hair tied back with a kerchief.

“Are you here to lend a hand then?” shouted Gendry, spiritedly, back up at them, mopping at his brow. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing strong forearms that were beginning to brown in the sun. 

Arya didn’t make a move, besides resting her hands on her hips to glare at him.

“You think I wouldn’t?”

  
“That’s up to you to decide….milady.” He couldn’t help but run his eyes over her form in the dress, he thought it rather funny it was day she hand't worn breeches, so he couldn't resist the jape. He hadn’t intended it as an actual proposition, but then again, Arya was the most stubborn person he’d ever met. 

“Fine!” Arya was already rolling up her sleeves and picking up her skirts to wade into the waters—to the rowdy cheers of all the farm folk. Anguy went so far as to whistle crassly.

“Start here,” said Gendry, showing her how to guide the onslaught of sheep through the water. Water splashed into her face and he couldn’t help but laugh. In return Arya splashed him back, a scowl on her face, as Gendry, shocked, momentarily opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish, emitting no sound.

  
“Oh lord, he ‘ent gettin’ a thing done now she’s ‘ere,” Anguy could be heard muttering to Davos.

Gendry did, in fact, school Arya expertly, definitely with more attention than he ever would have lavished on anyone else. Their synchrony as a pair failed to convince anyone the relations between the two were entirely platonic. After a long stretch of tireless work, that nonetheless invigorated Arya, her new skill making her feel useful and unusually proud of herself—Jeyne made her way down to the stream, calling for her.

“Ms. Arya, Ms Arya? Mr Dayne’s here. He—he wants a word with you, not that you’re dressed for it!” 

Arya’s face pallored momentarily, mid-way through hauling a sheep.

Gendry’s face fell, but he kept his head down, continuing his movements mechanically. 

“Well, I shouldn’t be dressing up for him either way, so if it can’t wait, he can see me as is,” Arya replied, mopping at her brow. “I’ll be back, just give me a minute,” she said, to Gendry, wading out of the water. 

Jeyne passed her a linen and Arya used it to mop at herself as best she could, blowing her hair out of her face and striding up the hill to where Mr Dayne stood in the distance.

“Good day Miss Stark. Excuse me for my interruption, I, ah, didn’t expect you to be so, er, involved in the day’s work. But nonetheless, I wanted to speak with you again, following our first meeting,” he said, his voice somewhat feeble.

“Well, I am somewhat of an unexpected woman, I suppose. Yes, I believe you have urgent word?”

“Well, urgent is but a matter of perspective. Will you walk with me a moment?” said Mr Dayne, ignoring the fact that she was dripping and must have been discomforted in the sopping garments—for the man lived in his head alone, in landscapes formed entirely of of fancy.

Arya didn’t especially want to be alone in his company—even after their first awkward meeting in the town hall, when she couldn’t help but blush furiously at the thought of the foolish letter she had sent him (though he couldn’t possible know her to be the author) her nerves around him would not leave. That, and in her current sodden state she wasn’t especially keen to walk. 

“Excuse my being forward, but I do need to get back to work, we’re not yet done for the day, see,” she said, gesturing downhill to the flurry of activity in the stream below.

“Well then, if time is of the essence, let me be forward.” From his pocket he pulled out the Valentine’s card. 

Arya’s stomach plummeted violently, her breath hitching. “I believe, I do, having done some inquiring into the matter—that you were the author of this…request” his voice trailed off momentarily. 

She couldn’t help her face flushing, shamed and nervous as she was. “I…with greatest respect sir, ’twas not fully intended so...literally.” For once in her life, Arya Stark was at a loss for words.

“Miss Stark. If you would let me say my piece: I am older than you and my finances secure. I may not be an exciting man but I am predictable in my nature, comfortable I would think. You are young, you are new to farming, and you will need...help. I can be that help. I would like to propose to you. I see you are blushing, so I think despite your nerves that it is not...unsavory.”

“I appreciate your...interest Mr Dayne, and I mean no offense, but with the greatest respect for your character, I fear—we don’t know each other, it would be unwise to follow through with anything...and I’m not even sure I-...I have a farm, I have no need for a husband, truly,” said Arya, words spilling out at random. What had she done? How had she cornered herself so ruefully with that letter? She would not, she could never, go ahead with the marriage. 

“I see. But, Miss Stark, I am a patient man. I have known disappointment before. I shall give you time and we will speak of it again in a few moons. I am happy to know that you will think of me.”

  
Arya found herself bewildered that he presumed himself in her good favour. She was shocked into silence, her heart beating loudly in her ears. Mr Dayne bowed at her and loped away, whistling. She couldn’t bear to yet turn around and return to the work, _to Gendry,_ below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again - thank you so much for your comments, they really do inspire me to write more! It's so heartening to know there are lovely readers out there. We are finally getting to the juicier dramatic points of the story – sometimes as I write I realise increasingly what a challenge it is to get inside their headspaces and make sense of all their actions, but what a ride it is – I keep having to revisit scenes I've rushed through in anticipation, so I hope the pacing still feels true. (Forgive me for typos galore in the chapter, which I only ever seem to see *after* posting)
> 
> Hope you continue to enjoy it! Working on the next chapters already <3 Looking forward to hearing from you.  
> Side note to clear up any confusion: Gendry and Bella are not related in this story!


	4. Part IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A heated disagreement between Arya and Gendry brings old tensions to the surface.  
> Ned Dayne persists. Arya's fraught feelings for Gendry confuse her more than ever.

Arya’s mind had been ill at ease since Mr Dayne’s unexpected proposal. She slept badly, tossing and turning; she endeavoured to keep herself busy with tasks, errands, invoices, but nothing could ease the sense of brewing dread. Anger simmered inside her at his presumption, idiotic Valentines card, or not: Could she not just be left alone? She wanted to be rid of the lot of them and their expectations. _Men._

At the end of the day, as she walked through the tributaries of sheds, barns, and stables, checking that everything was as it should be, she heard the sound of a whetstone grinding. It was Gendry, sharpening shears, though the sun was already down.

“Gendry, what are you doing _still_ working at this hour?,” said Arya facetiously, by way of opening, for she knew he rarely stopped, always finding something to keep busy with. 

“Oh, just...sharpening the shears,” he said, in his laconic way. He’d clearly been lost in thought. She often wondered what scenes were playing in his mind.

“Will you show me how to do it?” she said, looking, again for activity.

“’Course,” he replied, halting his movement and stepping away from the whetstone, ushering her over to where he stood.

Arya positioned herself in front of the whetstone and picked up the shears he’d put down.

“Here,” he said. “No, you must stand this way. If you don’t mind, just let me…,” His hand gently guided her forearms into place, before dropping to her waist to position her as if she were a marionette—Arya found her body moved with his happily. “Just guide it over the stone smoothly...that’s it,” She could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck and sense the heat his body gave off in the sliver of space between them. Instead of doing the thing she wanted to do—which was lean back into that very warmth, she felt on edge, not having ever willingly been so close to a man (besides her father, Jon, Robb...the names of the dead cycled through head unbidden). The feeling was unfamiliar, and so she shrugged him away, “Let me do it myself.” 

‘Yes, sorry, that was er-...,” Gendry trailed off.

  
“Can I ask you a favour?” interrupted Arya.

“Of course you can, milady.”

  
“You _know_ I hate it when you call me that!” 

“And I love to see your ire,” he replied, his face cracking into a rare, mischievous grin. 

“So cruel! For that injury, now you really do owe me a favor! ” 

“Is that so?” he said, hands clasped behind his back, emphasising his broad shoulders.

The playful grace fell from her face. “The thing is, I fear I’ve done something awfully stupid.”

“Go on,” he said, his eyes narrowingly slightly.

“Has anyone been speaking about myself and Mr Dayne? I thought I heard Pip and Grenn saying something the other day—and after he came to fetch me the other week, well, I don’t want anyone to have the wrong idea.”

“People have been talking, they said you be married before the end of the year,” Gendry replied, his voice tentative.

“Well, you must put an end to them! For that is all they are—rumours,” said Arya indignantly.

“If Mr Dayne did really speak of marriage I’m not going to tell stories just to please you.”

“All I asked is that you put an end to the suggestion that I might be marrying him…”

“So you admit, you aren’t _not_ engaged,”said Gendry, a little more forcefully.

“It isn’t that simple, he has it in his head—with no encouragement from me! He was so persistent, I said I don’t _want_ a husband, but he wouldn’t…”

“Ah, so that was my mistake— is that what I should have done, tried harder?” he laughed bitterly. Arya was shocked, it was the first time they had spoken about their past.

“Still, your actions have been unworthy of you,” he continued, his voice gravelly.

“May I ask where my unworthiness lies? In rejecting you perhaps?” snapped Arya.

He chuckled, darkly. “Don’t worry milady, I’d long given up hopes of you marrying me.”

Gendry’s words seemed to knock the air out of her and she was stunned speechless, her insides twisting.

“I’m even worse off than I was when I asked you—no lands or titles like your Mr Dayne.

All the same, I will say this, leading on a man you have no feelings for is beneath you. He showed that daft card to me and I’d hoped it wasn’t true—but how else did he get the madness into his head? The gods know we all need something to live for and riches he has but company or sense he does not. But now you want me, your faithful dog, to run about correcting your green errors? Half the farm already thinks I’m in love with you! Would you like me more pathetic?” He finished, exasperatedly, looking defeated.

Gendry rarely let himself hold such monologues—all Arya heard was his harsh judgement of her actions and his shame at being lumped together with loving her. _That he no longer thought of her that way at all_.

All Gendry felt was the shame that he still loved her, the shame that she did not, and the shame that he was cursed to always be too lowly to commune with her. He let his anger at the state of the world flow.

“Don’t,” her voice rose shrilly. “Don’t you dare speak to me that way Gendry. I will _not_ allow any man to judge my private actions. Just leave me if you truly think me some frivolous maid. I’d have you gone from this farm in the morning if you’ve so little regard for my character.”

Arya had only wanted his opinion as a friend—damn it—as the person she cared for most in this stupid world. But now he’d thrown this in her face.

“You forget—I am a man who feels, too, Arya. I’ll do you one better, I’ll leave at once,” he said, cryptically, his eyes conveying a quiet kind of fury she’d never yet seen in them.

“Fine. I don’t want to see your face again,” she turned on her heel to leave, her heart hammering in her chest with fear, not at his anger, but at the realisation that he was leaving her. But it was too late, it was done. Perhaps, she’d be better off without him there. There was already too much history between them and she did not know where she ever stood—what they meant with their words and what it was to be friends with a man.

Still, that night, as she lay her head on the pillow, she could not stop the tears, or the thought, that he was gone.

_____

Time felt oddly limp after Gendry left. Arya found she couldn’t face anyone to tell them of his departure—but it seemed he’d left a hasty letter to let Davos and Marya know, and the news had travelled like wildfire through the farm, speculations rife.

It was Davos too, who came and found her while she was in the stables, busying herself by tending to her mare. “Milady,” said the older man, “We’ve got a bad situation, I’m afraid. The sheep, fifty like, broke a fence and escaped into a field of young clover. They’ve eaten the lot. Don’t think they’d had too much t’eat since...”

“Right. Sorry—I don’t understand?” said Arya, confused and too sapped of energy to pretend to be the expert she was so hoping to become.

“It’s fatal to em—makes ‘em swell up something fierce till it presses the lungs and then they...’

“Well,” said Arya sharply. “What can we do?” 

“Come—I’ll show you what’s at hand. I’m ‘shamed t’ say there’s none o’ us that can handle it. You got to pierce them with a fine needle to let the bloat out—but a hair to the left o’ right and it’ll kill ‘em. There’s not a skilled shepherd among us. The only person who coulda done it is…”

  
“...Gendry.” Arya’s insides squirmed, her hands flying to her cheeks. It had only been just over a day since he’d left.

“Well, what choice do we have? Please, tell Lommy to go up the Kingsroad, he’s the fastest on horseback. Tell him to find Gendry and have him return to help us. He’ll come.”

“Right y’are”, said Davos, approvingly.

Arya and Davos made their way to the paddock in question, where, it seemed, every person from the farm was congregated. The sheep lay in the field, bloated, some foaming from the mouth. It was a truly awful sight to behold, knowing there was not a thing to do but sit by their side and offer them paltry company, in the hope that their soothing caresses might give them some solace.

Arya could not have said how long it took for Lommy to return, too anxious was she—but he was alone. Arya feared the worst—that Gendry had already gone so far they couldn’t find him. That he was truly gone.

“Why are you back alone? Could you not find him?” Arya all but cried.

“No, I found ‘im on the Kingsroad, he’s only up past Pennytree. He, er, gave me a message. He said you’re to go and ask him yourself if you want him to return.”

“Where did he get the audacity?” she cursed—she had never known Gendry to be one for such dramatics. 

“He said you’d say that,” said Lommy, looking ashen, “And he said for me to reply: ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’.”

Arya didn’t respond. Instead, she strode over to the horse, motioned for Lommy to get down and swung herself up into the saddle, setting off at a canter—leaving behind her workers as intrigued as they were mystified. As embarrassed as she was at being chided in front of them, she swallowed her pride. She needed him. “Rides like the wind that one does,” said Davos as she sped off.

“Can ‘ardly believe he had the balls to say that to his lady on high,” mused Anguy. 

“Must’ve been a right lovers’ tiff,” added Grenn. 

____

Arya breathed a sigh of relief as she sighted his unmistakable figure walking along the road, a modest pack of belongings slung over his broad shoulders. Arya felt awash with shame that she’d sent him away with no prospect of where to go next—truly alone.

“Gendry,” she shouted, getting his attention. He turned and fixed his eyes on her, as she let herself down from the horse. “Gendry, please don’t desert me! I need your help. Forgive me for being cruel.”

He didn’t answer her, only sighed deeply, shaking his head slightly. He walked towards her, his body brushing her side as he hauled himself up onto the horse and took the reins. Tall and broad as he was, he seemed to take up most of the sadde.

“Leave room for me,” Arya murmured, sheepish, mimicking his movements and sitting up in the saddle behind him, their bodies flush together.

She tended to hate sitting on a horse she couldn’t steer, but at that moment she let weight slump gratefully against his, her hands tight around his waist. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, feeling somewhat like a child, cared for and contented as the swift movement of the horse soothed her, her anxieties about the sheep and about Gendry’s departure dissipating.

If it was any other circumstance, she should have been chagrined at their entry like this into the paddock, in full view of everyone. But it was all too frantic to let their proximity be an issue—Gendry swung himself off the horse with a “Hello old friends” and barked out some orders, before setting by the nearest sheep and performing the grisly procedure. Arya stood by his side all afternoon as he took every single sheep under his care, one by one, she and the rest of their audience marvelling at his precision. By the end of the day—they’d lost all but one sheep. The loss, naturally, weighed on Gendry, who took everything on his shoulders. He wondered if it would have made a difference, had come back straight away? Measured as he was, his temper took him by surprise and he found himself looking back on his anger as if contemplating a stranger. 

Arya sent the rest of the workers away to retire for the day, staying back to help Gendry with the last sheep. She stroked the creature’s head, but no sooner than Gendry’s needle had found its destination, the sheep sprang up and ran away from them, shockingly spritely. Gendry’s face split into a relieved grin and he fell back into the grass, still warm from the sunny day despite the darkening tint to the sky. Arya sat back next to him, her elbows resting on her knees. 

  
He caught her eye and she let out an uncharacteristic giggle. 

“Not the day I was expecting to have,” exclaimed Gendry. 

“Thank you Gendry, thank you,” said Arya, pouring every ounce of gratitude she possessed into her words.

“Ah, so I’m welcome back, am I?” he said, his eyes dancing in the glow of the lantern that sat by their side.

“As if that’s even a question?” said Arya rolling her eyes. “I don’t know how we’d manage without you.” _I don’t know how I would._

_____

The clover incident cemented Gendry’s place at the farm—and it could hardly be imagined that it could be run without his help. He moved into a modest cottage of his own on the farm, a step up from his little room at the Malthouse. “You need your own space, young lad,” Davos had pressed him. “Can’t be keeping a room here like someone ready to up and drift on. You’re part o’ the place now.” 

The older man had clearly put in a word with Arya, for she came to Gendry one day and offered it to him at a hasty, token price, a fact he didn’t much want anyone else knowing—for they gossiped enough. He barely wanted to accept, but Arya being Arya was persistent, so he made a promise to himself to work doubly harder than he already did to prove his worth.

It was a modest, one-room stone cottage—little more than an armchair by fireplace, table and chairs (plural, not that he ever presumed to have houseguests) a sink, a dresser and his bed, but it was more spacious than he’d ever had. It already housed fond memories too, making it feel much like what people called a ‘home’.

He liked to think back to the day Arya had come, unexpectedly, to see him settled in. She had brought a jug of freshly cut wildflowers: He remembered how she set them on his small table, a tiny intimate act that made his heart swell—the only thought that made it fall promptly was that they were back to square one—she at the juncture of any number of paths, he the poor farmer in his bachelor’s cottage. Arya was wearing the same kerchief in her hair that he’d ran after so many years ago and he wondered whether she had taken special notice when she’d dressed that morning.

Along with the flowers, Arya had brought with her a large square package tucked under her arm, wrapped in brown paper and string. She’d looked nervous as she passed it to him. It was a framed painting of a pastoral dawn scene—golden light shining through a field and refracting on the surface of the gently foaming sea, far in the distance. “It’s just a small thing really, from the house. I just—it reminds me of you, so I thought it might be nice for you to have it.”

“But how ever will you remember me then if it’s not around?,” he said good-naturedly, deflecting with humor how deeply moved he was by her gesture.

“Don’t be stupid, as if I could forget you. You’re that bloody big you’re always in my line of vision. And now, what have I done? You’ll have a big head to boot,” she laughed, lightly.

“T’was just a jest. But truly, Arya, thank you. I’ve, ah, never had a gift before.”

Arya bristled slightly, not one for accepting thanks or flattery—she felt too bare under the intensity of Gendry’s gaze, his blue eyes staring straight into hers with the gentle gratitude he so often radiated. 

“Oh, I forgot to bring something for a toast!” she said, tapping her forehead and briskly changing the subject.

“I do have some cider here, I’m not a complete heathen. It’s no Dornish red but if you’ll humour me, a lady from such a fine house as yours…” Gendry joked, his accent changing to an insipid approximation of a gentlemanly one.

“Don’t be stupid. A ruined house is all it is—done as dust now. We’ve both been alone and without family a long time, you know that. I’m hardly a lady, I work, I’ve been penniless, I can sleep outdoors as well as I do on a featherbed.” 

“Well the latter part I didn’t know, but I’ll thank ye’ for the image” he said, eyes glinting mischievously as she felt her stomach flip. “So is that why you take such charity on me, our kindred past?” he chuckled.

She rolled her eyes. 

“Anyway—a toast, as you said,” he said, pouring them both a mug of cider.

“Yes,” she said, a smile illuminating her heart-shaped face, pretty tendrils playing about her forehead. 

“To new homes,” she said, raising her mug to his.

He had hung the painting above the fireplace so he could catch its warm glow from his bed. 

_____

Hot Pie, Jeyne and Marya had prepared a feast to celebrate the end of the sheep shearing. A long table was set by the side of the house—heaving with steaming tureens of roasted vegetables, pies with their dainty braided crusts, buttered beans that danced in the candlelights and joints of slow-cooked meat flanked by gravy boats. It went, somehow without saying, that Gendry sat at the end of the table. He’d tried to defer the position to Davos, but they’d all pushed him into place, clapping him on the back.

It wasn’t until Arya spoke—“Gendry, please sit, will you?”—that he relented settling into the chair, sitting opposite Arya like a husband would a wife. He tilted his mug of ale in her direction and smiled at her, somewhat sheepishly. Were it the truth that she was his, like he’d dreamed so many moons ago, and he could sit there, admiring her openly. That they would go to bed together that night and wake come the morning, the same way. He shook his head slightly, taking a sip of his drink as Alys, Jeyne and Lommy chatted amiably around him.

Gendry’s gaze had made Arya feel warm across the table as she sipped her wine to allay her nerves, before she made a speech: “Now I’m not very good at speeches, grouchy person that I am, so I shall keep it short. I know I might be stern and strange, but I’m grateful for your work, but even more so for having you all. It’s been many years since I’ve sat at a feast—and though there have been dark times—it has led me here—home. I couldn’t imagine finer people to spend my days with. So, thank you for welcoming me. Now, eat and enjoy yourselves!” She finished, a blush creeping up her neck as commotion began, conversation disappearing in favour of the clanking of rotating dishes and moans of delight as they tucked in.

After the stupor of over-eating set in, the food was cleared away—Lem brought out his violin and began a series of jovial tunes. Arya and Gendry continued to steal glances at each other as drink warmed them all, smirking periodically at the various antics erupting around the table.

But whatever the energy between them, it fizzled harshly as a figure strode over to the table, lantern in hand. It was Ned Dayne.“I thought I might drop in on the festivities and congratulate you all for the season,” he said brightly, bopping on the balls of his feet. Gendry stood up automatically, class forcing him to vacate his position to the man of higher society. He rose and squeezed in to sit next on the bench next to Alys. His eyes were downcast as he moved, so he missed Arya’s half-hearted gesture at him to stay seated before—pressured by propriety—she invited Mr. Dayne to sit with them.

Arya was thankful for the distraction the music provided, as the farm folk took turns to sing songs around the table. As the evening became slightly more raucous and Lem’s less dignified songs prevailed, the rowdy group of workers found excuses to retire to the Malthouse, conspicuously leaving Arya and Mr Dayne at the table. Meera giggled almost uncontrollably as Arya arched an eyebrow at her. Gendry strode away with them all without a backward glance, uncharacteristically looking for a nightcap—anything to dull _that_ —he thought, as Alys, who had not left him alone through the feast, chattered away about Arya and Mr Dayne, much to his displeasure.

They were alone: Arya still had not warmed to Mr Dayne’s presence. He had been finding every opportunity to stride through the farm to speak with her. Though he was kind and jovial his attention was suffocating—the slight desperation as he spoke to her rendering him rather pathetic. 

“What a splendid, splendid evening. Such jolly folk there are,” he mused. “May I speak plainly, Miss Stark?” Arya burned inside with chagrin. It was grating to hear her addressed so—she was called milady, mistress, Miss Arya, somewhat mockingly ‘Our Lady Farmer’ but never Miss Stark. “Please, I implore you, you must tell me when I might have an answer from you—I find it is all I can think about. I’m sure it’s clear that I am quite-quite in lo-....” 

Arya stomach rolled nauseously and she cut him off: “Mr Dayne, with the greatest respect, please give me at least until harvest to speak of it with you,” hoping again, rather fruitlessly, that time bought with obfuscation might help her turn him down gently. _But how?_

Mr Dayne, meanwhile, beamed, completely blindsided by his own good thoughts and titillated by what he perceived to be a coquettish naivete.

_____

The next day, as Arya made her way down to the kitchen after a quick supper—snippets of conversation drifted halting her movement. She listened in furtively.

“Won’t tell a soul what he’s thinking, but did you see ‘em last night? To my mind there’ll be a proposal soon, he’s no man to tumble in the haystacks with ‘em first. And Alys is a good girl too,” said Hot Pie.

“Be that as it may, I’m willing to bet he holds a candle for Ms Arya instead,” said Jeyne.

But Arya didn’t catch Jeyne’s words, having turned abruptly to walk outside to clear her head, strange feelings stirring inside her. She knew Gendry was not hers to have but the thought of him with _Alys_ stunned her. Alys with her pretty fair hair and easy-going nature. Is that what he would like? Surely she was too chatty, too silly for him? Then, who was good enough for him thought Arya bitterly. 

She lit a lantern, deciding to take her nightly walk through the property. From the doorway, as fate would have it, she sighted Gendry walking in twilight, Alys by his side. He was laughing at something he said and she leaned over to pluck a piece of straw from his hair. He blushed. Arya hid from view until they passed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're slowly getting there! Looking forward to hearing from you! This is such a challenge to write and I find myself flying through the drafts just to get it out—Thomas Hardy's D-R-A-M-A + Gendrya slow burn is a *lot*. Hope it's all working for you <3 I'm sure enjoying writing these two. Thanks for reading.


	5. Part V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Gendry ends a dalliance before it even was to be, Arya finds herself uncharacteristically charmed by a sergeant passing through Riverrun.

_INTERLUDE_   
  


_All Saints, eleven thirty, All Saints, eleven thirty, All Saints, thirty—_ Bella Rivers chanted the name of the church to herself as she half-ran up the path in her excitement, the bouquet of wildflowers she’d gathered in the field earlier clasped tightly in front of her chest. Her and Aegon were to be married _finally_ and she could hardly contain her joy at their union. He’d said he couldn’t marry her while she still worked as a maid at Riverrun, so she left—and had been hiding, sleeping in barns or by his barracks until this promised day. Once they were married, they would find a house, he’d promised, and she imagined herself fat with babes, and happy—so happy, an orphan like her, to have a family of her own at last.

But as she sped up the path and pushed open the heavy oak door, it was not Aegon, in his scarlet tunic, polished helm at his side, standing to attention at the altar. The church was full with a wedding party, a blonde bride and groom standing close as the priest read his sermon. She pulled the door shut, slowly, with as much energy as she’d thrust it open. Bella waited outside, hiding behind a tree as the wedding bells chimed and the part filtered out.

Where was Aegon? He said he’d meet her there. Aegon, her dear Aegon, who had a soldier’s temper and a soldier’s taste for drink, but who had promised her the world. Who she believed, most truly.

Bella waited. She waited until darkness fell and her wildflowers began to droop, their leaves taking off into the wind. She waited until the night air chilled her to the bone, without a cloak or a coat as she was.

What Bella could not have known was that Sergeant Aegon Tarygaryen _had_ showed up to his wedding— _All Souls, eleven thirty_ —just as he’d told her. There were to be no guests, just one witness, his second in command, who began to fidget slightly as they stood for near on an hour. They could all hardly believe he was settling down, and for a maid no less. But Bella had not come. She’d left him at the altar, disgraced.

_____

Arya walked around the property until night truly fell—feeling uneasy after overhearing the gossip in the kitchen, only then to sight such intimacy between Gendry and Alys. Would he still hold her so dear even after he married another? Arya’s mind ran down paths unbidden, picturing Gendry so earnestly proposing to Alys as he had done to her—it was a moment she felt oddly possessive of, despite having spurned him. Would he leave the farm to start anew? Skilled as he was, he could, there was nothing keeping him at Riverrun, she thought, not really, so he would be free to leave.

The only consolation she could find was that Ned Dayne had set off for a month to manage his other properties—so she would be free at least from his interferences and endless waiting on her word.

As Arya followed the overgrown path that led back to the farmhouse, disturbed by her turbulent thoughts, she felt herself trip over and drop her lantern. She let out a strangled cry, hearing the impact of another body fall near her and the deep—“Oof—it emanated. 

“I’m lost, we’re entangled,” said a husky voice, too close to her.

“Get off, leave me be!” cried Arya.

“I said, we’re entangled—my boot spur has caught your hem. I was just lost on my way, trying to find Riverrun.”

“Well, you’ve found it alright, you’re on the property,” chided Arya. 

  
She felt a tug on her dress as he freed the spur on his boot from where it had caught on the hem.

Arya moved to reach for her lantern, but her unwelcome companion beat her to it, raising it so that her face showed in its pool of light. 

“Never did I expect to find myself caught on one so beautiful, should I have known I would not have rushed to free us. I’m struck,” he gasped.

“Don’t mock me,” said Arya, taking the opportunity to snatch back her lantern.

“You can trust my honor. I mean you no harm and I speak only the truth, most ardently. Sergeant’s honour—Sergeant Aegon Targaryen, that is,” he said. Illuminated now by the lantern, Arya could see the flame reflected in his oddly violet-coloured eyes. His blonde hair seemed to glow, too, where the light caught it. It was striking to behold.

“Please, stop staring,” said Arya. “Leave me on my way. You wanted Riverrun? You’ve found it, the Malthouse is to the right fork in the path.”

“But wait—you haven’t told me your name,” he shouted after her as she strode away to the house, feeling on edge from the cumulative effects of the evening.

____

  
  


The next day as Arya walked into fields where the workers were rolling hay into large bales, she caught sight of the eyesore that was Sergeant Tarygaren. It seemed he’d shed his soldier’s tunic, instead, he wore a loose white shirt and breeches, his hair tied back from his face. He looked incongruously put-together to be working the field. Upon sighting her, he dropped his pitchfork unceremoniously and strode over to meet her, bowing deeply.

  
“I understand you’re the mistress here. Had I known that, I perhaps—though it’s hard to say for certain, struck as I was—would have been less forward. Hm, I’d heard words of the Queen of the Cornmarket’s beauty in town and now I know them to be true. So really, can I be blamed?” he said, speaking languidly.

  
“Yes, I find you can. What are you doing here anyhow in my fields? I don’t take you for a farmhand…” said Arya terseley.

“I used to help out sometimes when your uncle was still here.”

“I suppose I should have to thank you then.”

“Should? Why might it be a question?” he said, quizzical.

“For I don’t much want to be in your debt for anything,” countered Arya brusquely. 

“You wound me!” replied Sergeant Targaryen, hand moving to his heart.

“I wound all men. But none so much as those who try to flatter me.”

“Flatter you? It’s the truth and I see it more by day. You are it—incontrovertibly—stunning. But, what damage have I done with my words? To think a man cannot even call a woman beautiful, what times we live in Ms. Stark.”

“Times where a woman can scorn a man for attempting to flatter her with gilded words if she so wishes,” replied Arya, arms crossed over her chest.

“Oh I think I’d rather have curses that you than kisses from any other,” he replied, making a blush rise up her neck of its own accord.

“I am not in the habit of allowing people to be bold and brash with me—even _if_ they are strangers who are tending to my farm.”

“What shall I do then? Beg for your forgiveness?” He made a move as if to kneel on the ground.

“Don’t, don’t make a scene!” said Arya turning to walk away. “You are _so_ profane.”

“Alright, I’ll stop, but only if you don’t leave.” Arya found herself pausing her movement as he continued, “I’d call me persistent—and fascinated—by this woman before me, the most beautiful in Westeros, I’d vouch.”

“I do _not_ for one stroke of the clock, presume to be fascinating or quite _that_ superlative Sergeant Targaryen,” snapped Arya.

“Ah, Miss Stark, what lies. How many hearts have you broken? I’m sure you’ve had many admirers. Hear my assessment...There will have been those who proposed after knowing you for a breath, who needed to have you married to them and could love you only in their ownership of you. Am I right? Then, I’m certain there are silent admirers, driven mad by thoughts of never being worthy of thee, a living vision. Then, there are those like me, cursed as they are by life’s passions, to let their feelings spill forth, but for you only to spurn them. But you see, I do not want to possess you. I want what it is that you want,” he finished, rather cryptically. 

Arya was speechless for a moment at his audacity. “I hope you fight as well as you speak Sergeant, or else you’ve cursed yourself to the wrong career.”

“Ah—but you’re a Stark, you’re from military stock yourself, are you not? You’ve seen a sword or two in your time? I’d have you vouch for yourself.”

“I think you are conceited,” replied Arya, archly. “I forbid you to speak to me again unless I see fit to speak to you again.”

  
“Well then, my short time here will be full of displeasure,”

“Short, you say?”

  
“I am only here a month, then I’m back to the drill. So may I stay and work the fields?”

“I suppose, if you keep quiet and cause me no nuisance.” 

‘Well, I'm charmed. Speaking with you is much like a water dance, my lady. A carefully choreographed, deathly affair.”

“You know of water dancing?” gasped Arya.

“Of course,” he said nonchalantly. “I don’t have my sword with me now, but I can procure it. I told you just now, I’d have you vouch for my skill.”

Arya squared her shoulders, as if to make up for her moment of transgression in flattering him. “Well I should hardly think a display of Braavosi swordplay would be appropriate in the midst of haymaking,” she said dryly.

“I’ve an idea. Meet me at the hollow in the ferns. At sunset.”

“Alright, but I shall bring my companion Meera,” said Arya.

“Whatever for? No, I perform for you and you alone Miss Stark. The choice is yours.” And with that, before Arya could turn on her heel and leave him to stew, he bowed and strode back to the field, leaving Arya somewhat flushed and confused. 

____

Arya’s father and brothers had served in the military. As a child she’d loved nothing more than stealing her brother Jon’s sword and attempting to wield it, bastardising the water dance she so admired. As much as she was suspicious of Sergeant Targaryen: there was a comforting familiarity in the pomp of the militia that she knew from her brothers’ comrades in the parades, the fake gallantry and double-edged words. The promised demonstration of the water dance seemed such a welcome harkening to the past that she found herself walking the hollow in the ferns come sunset, alone. She did not tell Meera where she was going and as she walked, she felt a strange thrill at the clandestine nature of it all. No witnesses, no talk. 

Sergeant Targaryen was there in the middle of the clearing, dressed in his full sergeant garb: his scarlet tunic bearing a litany of medals and ribbons, his polished boots glinting in the dwindling light that filtered through the ferns. Standing to attention, he had on his hip a rapier-like Braavosi blade. “Good evening my lady,” Arya couldn’t help but feel how _odd_ it was to be called something other than a truncated ‘milady’. “I see you’ve come alone, good. I’m not in the habit...,” he said, drawling slightly and mimicking her words from earlier, “...of showing just anyone my craft.” He twirled the sword from where it was hung on his hip, tossing it up in the air and catching it in front of him. 

“Stand here, _Arya_ ,” he said, her first name rolling off his tongue as he pointed his sword in front of him.

“You know well, I presume, the sound a Braavosi rapier makes when it dances?”

“Yes, it sings. It’s a kind of melody,” said Arya.

“Correct. I want you to use your senses.” He produced a red silk kerchief from his pocket and it unfurled out like water. “I want you to hear the dance, I want you to feel it at your core, for as much as water dancing kills, when we practice, it is art.”

Arya’s nerve endings were alight. In the privacy of the clearing with a near stranger, she felt oddly charged with reckless energy. She found herself immediately smoothing down her hair so she could place the blindfold on.

  
“Allow me,” he said, cutting short her motions. She felt him gently tie the kerchief behind her head. He whispered in her ear, the sensation making her jolt: “Ready?”

“Will the sword not cut me?” she asked. 

“It is blunt and in any case, I would not.”

“Alright. Go on,” replied Arya, inhaling deeply.

“Don’t flinch.”

As the sword sliced the air around her, she felt the air itself shift and part, sending a shiver down her spine. She felt it pass by the dip of waist, her chest, and the side of her neck, as her ears filled with its long-lost tune, a high-pitched symphony of muted violence. She could barely calm her heavy breaths and she found her mouth open itself in shock.

“Take off your blindfold,” he commanded. She did as she was told. _When did she ever do as she was told?_ she found herself thinking. 

Arya feebly took to the knot and undid it, shaking her head as she held the silk out in front of her to Sergeant Targaryen, whose eyes seemed to gleam with energy. He reached for it, but before his fingers graced the fabric, his sword darted forward and effortlessly sliced it in two, smirking slightly.

“You said it was blunt!” gasped Arya

“That I did. I told you, you could trust me, didn’t I? The sword could have skinned you alive, but I did not. I would not,” he paused to look at her, his violet eyes boring into hers as he fixed the sword on his hip and stepped even closer to her. 

Just as she had never been called beautiful, Arya had never been kissed properly, and the warmth of Sergeant Targaryen’s mouth, his tongue sliding in to slip by hers, was a foreign but not unenjoyable sensation. She heard herself moan into his mouth. But her shock at him darting forward to kiss her was nothing compared to her jolt of surprise when she felt him cup her between the thighs, his finger stroking upwards to slide roughly over her clothed slit all the way to her nub, sending a violent shiver through her. Arya found her hips bucking forward into his touch, but just as soon as he began, he stopped, sighing heavily in her ear, he whispered, “Meet me again tomorrow, the same time,” before departing the clearing swiftly, leaving her alone, heady, and completely breathless.

We could suppose that the great tragedy here was that insofar, no one had ever called Arya beautiful. No one had spoken to her in passionate terms, her dealings with men all but chaste conversations, finishing, twice now, with them professing some great need to arrange a union between them. Lust had not been part of the conversation. Her desire, the right of men, had never come into it. She’d never thought of being with someone as anything but a duty, a contract where she was the goods. She hadn’t known she could _enjoy_ it.

When she looked back on this, on what would be a doomed romance, she saw this so clearly it winded her. There was, wrapped up in it, too, a recklessness she had never allowed herself before. For Sergeant Troy bore no likeness to a certain Gendry Waters, who in her mind had already abandoned her for Alys, in fact, he was quite the opposite. Where Gendry was a closed book, Aegon was a sermon—words flowing for effect alone.

What was it that Old Nan used to say to her as a child? _Life can only be lived forwards, but only understood backwards._

_____

  
  


Gendry didn’t know how to let down Alys. 

She was comely and kind and deserving of love. But he didn’t have it in him to let her think it could be something else. He’d been in his cups at the shearing feast, lingering at the Malthouse to delay waking the next day, knowing that Arya may well be betrothed to Ned Dayne. Ned bloody Dayne who’d always have chances more than him.

Alys, emboldened by drink, had kissed him, her arms reaching up and about his neck. Even though she was the wrong woman, it had felt _good_ , her soft lips on his and the comforting warmth that had radiated off her in his arms. But everything had consequences—he was the result of such an occasion—so he’d not let it go further. But his memory of it was foggy at best and Alys gave no great indication that she wanted to bring it up.

So, he accepted her advances awkwardly as she brought him bread, asked him to walk with her, and plucked straw from his hair that night, in sight of Arya—who was, he regretted, still precisely placed at the very centre his heart.

As he finished up in the paddocks one evening, he saw a scarlet-clad figure striding out from the fir plantation as the sun was setting. It was the soldier who’d arrived but days before. He caught sight of Gendry, inclining his head to him, a cocky smirk on his face. Gendry wondered what he could have been up to, dressed as finely as if for a military parade. He pretended to carry on with closing the gate and checking the fences, lingering there a while longer. Not five minutes later did another figure emerge from the plantation. It was Arya, looking pensive, her hair mussed. He watched her pause and touch her lips, smiling slightly to herself as she continued down the path back to the farm house. 

Gendry departed, uneasily, intending to find out more about this strange newcomer.

____

In the days that followed, Sergeant Targaryen was the talk of the farm. He’d been staying at the Malthouse—his pretence for stopping at Riverrun, besides his intentions to help out in the late summer, as he’d ‘always’ done, was to ask after Bella Rivers. Supposedly, she’d intended to marry a man of the militia, his second in command, but she’d stood him up at the altar and no one had heard of her since. He could not be goaded to reveal who the groom was and Marya and Jeyne were anxious anew, without word from her and now _this._

Davos had no kind words to say him: He’d always found him slippery, a flirt, and a lazy sort of ersatz farmhand to boot. It struck him as odd that he meant Bella was intended for his comrade, since it was he himself who’d been caught sneaking off at all hours with her the summer before. After Gendry had sighted him and Arya departing from the fir plantation, and word had travelled the pair had been sighted speaking animatedly in the field that day, he resolved to warn her.

He knew she would not welcome his intrusion, but he steeled himself for it. They had not spoken just the two of them since the shearing feast—she had seemed to avoid him, and Gendry, too, found himself not making an effort to cross her path, fearing news of an engagement to Ned Dayne.

He knew she made a nightly circuit of the property, for he often did so himself, so he positioned himself on her route. 

“Arya,” he called out, “Might I walk with you?” 

“I suppose so,” she replied, “Though I’m quite fine on my own.”

“I know that, but t’would calm me. There are some unsavoury characters about,” he said, rather bluntly, “...and I don’t suppose Mr Dayne would be happy should he know that.” Gendry had gone at opening the conversation rather obtusely.

  
“Why should you mention him?” pried Arya, her eyes narrowing.

“Well, I-I do not claim to know your private life, but there’s still word some days that you’re promised and….”

“And...what? Come, Gendry, speak plainly I can see there’s something you want to say,” said Arya irritatedly.

“I’ve seen you with Sergeant Targaryen. People will talk. Please, I ask of you, don’t go off alone with him. I don’t believe him to be a man of his word.”

  
Fear, why was it fear, she thought, rose in her that instant: How did Gendry know of their relations? _Had he seen them in the clearing?_

“For one, step out of my affairs Gendry, you meddle here. I am not betrothed to Ned Dayne. I do not care for him and I do not intend to marry. I told him at the feast, while you were off with _Alys,_ that I would think on it and give him my final answer. I have and the answer is _no_. I will write to him on the 'morrow—not that I need to explain myself to you. What is it with you and this farm and betrothals?” Arya cried to a now pink-eared Gendry. “Secondly, I do believe Sergeant Targaryen to be a man of his word and he has proven to me as much.”

“Are you sure? Are you really sure as day? For the sketches of his character that I have heard have not been becoming. And there is something, there is something there that I do not like,” said Gendry pensively. “Arya, come, you know that I love you. I’m sure I always will. I say this not out of expectation, but to make it plain that I am but someone who wishes the best for you. My fortunes turned, and I know never to expect that you would look down upon me with your position now. But I implore you—to keep the respect of those that work here and with the faith that I want only the best for you—don’t be letting yourself be seen with that soldier. He’ll disgrace you.”

“Don’t, don’t, don’t,’ choked out Arya, though it was hardly clear what part of his dialogue she found so intolerable. 

“You mean more to me than any of this. Please, listen. I’m five years older than you, Mr Dayne, ten. Before it’s too late, think of how safe you would be partnered to him instead, rather than throwing your lot away with a soldier.”

Arya found herself burning her inside that he would send her to the highest, most respectable bidder.

“Mr. Waters!” She shouted sternly. “How dare you talk to me like I’m a prize sheep to be traded. Leave my sight, leave my farm if that’s all you think of me, if that’s what you think love is.”

“Arya,” he said, not rising to formality to distance her. “Stop threatening to make me leave each time I’m truthful with you! Don’t forget that I was almost coming up in the world once too. You may not think it for I have been constant to you, but I’m not content to stay here forever like this. You and I both know the shape of the labour that I do for the farm—so don’t insult my work, and my worth, by sending me away. I know I’m interfering, but I feel I have no choice but to be uncivil in these moments, in the hope you’ll one day forgive me," his face was flushed as he spoke roughly, his blue eyes disturbed.

Arya found her anger at him quelled slightly by his admission that he cared for her still, but her spirit sunk in tandem—that he would place his feelings for her _beneath_ wanting what was _better_ for her, supposedly in Ned Dayne. In that moment, she resented him and his weakness of character—what good was it to tell someone you loved them and in the same breath press them upon someone else? What good was it to care for her if all he did was moralise and order her about and leave her confused about where they stood? She knew Aegon was not a perfect man, but she knew, oh she knew well, that she was not a perfect woman. They seemed evenly paired.

“Just leave me be for now. I’m asking not as your mistress Gendry, but as a woman.”

“Yes, milady,” he replied gently, his eyes searching hers before he turned away and left. She watched his tall figure until he disappeared into a vanishing point on the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's got to get bad before it gets good—then, I promise, it'll be most very good for these two! For those who haven't read the original book, just know ol' Thomas Hardy loves him some drama. 
> 
> I am not a patient person—so I am struggling to give my writing space and find my fingers flying across the keyboard to get this story out of me. I just hope this is not at the risk of quality and I do so hope you continue to enjoy the story.
> 
> It brings me so much joy and motivation to write more after hearing from you—so please throw this dog a bone and let me know your thoughts!


	6. PART VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After their heated exchange, Arya and Gendry avoid each other, succumbing to presumptions.  
> Ned Dayne finds himself bested and descending into rage.  
> Arya acts on her brewing desire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note that things are sort of heating up, rating raised to ~Explicit even though this chapter is just a little taster of what's to come. Chapter count increased too (possibly to increase again). Thanks for reading, for coming along on this ride, and for your ever-lovely comments <3

When Arya returned to the farm house, heart stuttering after her quarrel with Gendry, she raced straight up the stairs to Meera’s room, knocking softly on the door. Her friend opened it, ushering her in upon seeing her stricken face. 

  
“Arya, whatever is the matter?” she asked.

At her question, Arya found herself bursting into frustrated tears, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she repeated, covering her face.

“Whatever for?” said Meera, embracing her and smoothing her hair. 

“I-I’ve been distant from you, hiding—and perhaps I’ve been stupid, I feel I don’t know who I am anymore,” sighed Arya agressively.

“Come, sit down,” Meera ushered her to sit on her quilted coverlet, holding Arya’s hand. “Start at the beginning.”

“It all started with Sergeant Targaryen—is he...is he a _bad_ sort Meera?”

“Well, I can’t pretend to know him well since I’m only a year at Riverrun, but he’s a soldier, you know what they’re like…They love empty words and women and drink, or so they say. But, on second thoughts that’s all men isn’t it? If he’s good to you then...” she finished, her tone rising suggestively as she trailed off.

“I’ve been...meeting with him and—oh Meera, I’ve never felt this way. It’s as if I’ve gone mad for a _man,_ I hardly know my thoughts any more…one stupid kiss and I’m someone else...I find myself wondering constantly what he thinks of me. I find I only want him to think the best but I’ve no clue how to convince him. I feel a nervous wreck,” Arya rambled.

  
“Arya…,” said Meera earnestly, “You’ve never been in love have you? And, a man has never been... _affectionate_ with you? 

Arya shook her head, eyes downcast, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of it you know...not everything has to wait for the marriage bed, whatever it is people say. It’s nice to want and feel wanted,” said Meera, who was a few years older than her and had grown up in the Crannoglands where female desire was not the sin it often was in the mid-country and the Crownlands.

“And then there’s...Gendry, just,” Arya palmed her face, “He’s so stubborn and can’t keep his damn mouth shut and out of my affairs...”

“I think you’ll find he’s probably jealous…” vouched Meera.

“I don’t think he is. And he has no right to be, the _hypocrite_ ,” Arya spat, thinking of Alys. “He told me I should marry Ned Dayne and that I would _disgrace_ myself with Aegon and that I should listen to him and his advice because he _—_ as he says _—loves_ me,” she continued with an air of disbelief. “I had brothers once but they’re all dead and I certainly don’t need another and I _certainly_ don’t need to be pushed into gainful marriages like some kind of mare. I’m fine on my own,” Arya cried, flopping back on Meera’s bed. Meera joined her, resting on her elbow and propping her face up with her palm.

“What a mess indeed. You ought to focus on what you want for once, leave the rest out your mind. We’re young,” she said, rubbing Arya’s shoulder reassuringly. “I’m to visit my cousin on the ‘morrow, in Wendish Town, but if you need anything, if you want a change of scenery, come and meet me, you’ll be more than welcome. I know you might not want to part from your scarlet-clad lover, but the offer’s there. And just leave Gendry be if you’ve no mind to talk to him, knowing you two it’ll sort itself out.”

“Thank you Meera, what would I do without you?” said Arya, looking over at her.

“Hopefully not marry that awful bore Dayne. So tell me, I want to live vicariously, what _have_ you been up to now that you’ve discovered the pleasures of the flesh?” said Meera giggling.

Her laughter was contagious. Anyone walking down the hallway could have hazarded a guess at the topic that had the two women squealing like schoolgirls.

Before Meera left the next day, she helped Arya pen a refusal to Mr Dayne, feeling somewhat responsible for the whole affair. Arya gave the letter to the postman the next day and as if the paper was the burden itself, she felt lighter for it.

_____

Emboldened by her talk with Meera, Arya continued to meet with Aegon in their strange game of cat and mouse. She had not been bold enough to kiss him yet, letting him make advances, or sometimes, too full of nerves, she’d hastily make her leave. He teased her for her chaste ways despite her thorny words and her mercurial temper. 

Two weeks before his month at Riverrun would come to an end, Aegon told her he was to visit a friend up at Seagard. At the time, they’d been sitting in the fir plantation, his head in her lap as she stroked his hair while he regaled her with tales of the regiment. 

They said their goodbyes that dusk and she’d let him roguishly palm her breast and slide his hands to cup her buttocks as he kissed her roughly. With him now gone and Meera in Wendish Town—she felt exposed, left on the farm with every chance of bumping into _him_. She found herself doing less around the farm so as to avoid him—which is how she found herself uncharacteristically indoors one afternoon, lolling her bed, strangely forlorn and restless. 

The sun warmed her skin as it streamed in, golden. Lazily, her thoughts took her back to when Aegon had cupped her mound that day in the clearing—it had been roguish but exhilarating and so much more real than any fantasy she’d ever made up during intimate explorations on her own. Though she was a maid, and her experiences before Aegon nonexistent, it did not mean she hadn’t known how to keep herself company over the years.

She hitchen up her skirt to the side and pulled her smallclothes down, guiding her hand to its destination, she stroked herself on the outside before dipping a finger between her folds, languidly settling into her thoughts. It was new to have him in her thoughts and she found herself rearranging in her minds eye: The unknown man in her fantasies had, up until this point, dark hair, where Aegon’s was almost ice white, his skin was suntanned and he was broad-shouldered where Aegon was lean.

She thought back to the days earlier, she imagined the way his tongue had felt in her mouth and the jolt of energy as he’d touched her arse, gathering the beginnings of wetness at her entrance and circling it around her nub. As she worked herself into pleasure and began to edge towards her peak, the scenes in her mind switched of their own accord: Suddenly her mind replaced Aegon for the familiar figure. But this time the man's face was no longer vague, it was Gendry she was picturing—his face the logical extension to the imagined body that had brought hers to ecstasy so many times. The fir plantation swam before her eyes and she was drawn back to that evening at the axle grind, when his body had bracketed hers so closely.

In her present fantasy that she found herself utterly powerless to halt, instead of shrugging him away as she had done, she leaned back into him and ground against his crotch as he met her with his hips. His hands came to rest on gently her waist and his head dropped to her shoulder, planting soft, wet kisses against her neck. She could almost hear their moans filling her bedroom as her body warmed and an odd sort of fluttering spread from heart, to gut, to her pulsing center. She imagined him turning her around with his hands and lifting her up with ease, placing her on the worktop gently, then parting her thighs so he could stand between them and kiss her tenderly, full on the lips, as her hands ran over the strong muscles of his broad back. Arya rolled over onto her stomach, working herself against her hand and peaked violently with a cry into her mattress, confused yet more sated than she had ever been in her life. Shuddering with the aftershocks of her climax, an angry tear rolled down her cheek.

It was all she could do not to yell at Alys when she saw her later in the kitchen—but whatever would it be for? The girl had done nothing wrong, had she? Arya had had her chance with Gendry, after all. Now she had not the faintest idea where they stood—what he wanted, and even more mysterious to her, what she herself truly wanted.

_____

  
  
She had fallen into a strange half-sleep when she was roused by Jeyne knocking on her bedroom door. “Miss Arya, Mr Dayne is returned here to see you. He won’t come in the house, says you’re to walk with him.”

“How fine of him to ask,” Arya muttered, “Very well, tell him I’ll come down.” she straightened her clothes before rising from her bed heavily. If he’d received her letter, the meeting would not be a desirable one, but then again, she never relished meeting with him. She hoped this interaction would be their last.

“Good day, Miss Stark,” said Mr Dayne breathlessly waiting at the doorstep. His usually pressed clothing looked slightly crumpled, as if he’d slept in it and his coiffed hair was in slight disarray. “Please, may we speak somewhere privately? Walk with me.”

Before waiting for her reply, as she was uncomfortable accustomed to by now, he strode away quickly, so that she had to pick up her skirts and hurry to catch up with him. He continued in broad strides until they’d reached a copse half a paddock away, when he turned to her abruptly, his eyes darting around nervously.

“So, by letter it began and by letter it has ended?,” he said, his tone rising. “What happened to your sweet words—remember the day when I saw you at the sheep washing? Such sweet words we spoke—and for me to look upon you even as you were sodden through. No, but I saw your beauty, your spirit,” his hands were running through his hair, clutching at his scalp. Arya wanted to be anywhere but there in his company.

  
“I-I have _tried_ Mr Dayne, with all respect. But I think you exaggerate my capacity to love—I have not had much of it since I was a small child and I’ve done my best to survive untethered to anyone. I do not warm easily to others. I think ‘tis not for me.”

“Lies. Warm I know you can, do you think I do not know I am replaced?” he spat.

“Mr Dayne, I fear I do not know what you’re talking about?” said Arya cautiously. She did not know how her private affairs with Aegon had reached his ears. 

“No, no you are not to blame. I know his caper with the likes of you, an impressionable maid. I cannot forgive myself for going and leaving you vulnerable to such whims when we were as good as betrothed.”

“Mr Dayne!” said Arya harshly, “I do not know when I intimated my acceptance in your mind, but I can assure you—,” her blood was beginning to boil at his presumption, physically repulsed at the thought of being tied to such a vain chauvinist.

He cut her off again. “But I find I cannot accept it. Feelings such as I have for you are not simply ended. No one, no one, could appreciate you the way I do so fondly, least of that soldier,” he spat out the word as if reviled to have ceded his prize to lowlier ranks. “I swear by the Seven I’d strike him down now if I saw him,” he said, flexing the fingers of his right hand as if toying with a trigger. “Whatever you do, keep him away from me Miss Stark, I will never forgive him for taking you from me. I do not know if I could control myself. Mark my words this cannot be the end of our story,” he looked at her, eyes suddenly tearful and stalked away, a small figure.

_____

The next morning Arya found herself throwing clothes at random into a pack. She couldn’t stay at Riverrun a moment longer. She would take up Meera’s offer and ride to Wendish Town, hoping the change in scenery would inspire freedom from the shackles of situation that seemed to hedge her in at present.

At least, she’d intended to ride to Wendish Town. But as she reached the forked path on the Kingsroad, she turned left, heading further north to Seagard.

_____

Gendry had not seen Arya for two days which, in their current climate, was not unusual. It was clear she was avoiding him since their conversation and he intended to give her space, feeling foolish and heartsick, if he was honest with himself, that he’d encouraged her to seek out Ned Dayne. However, now Jeyne stood before him, asking after the mistress, for it appeared that _no one_ had seen her for over a day. It wasn’t like her to leave without a note Jeyne had said, though Gendry, thinking back bitterly to her sudden departure from Lady Crane’s, found that it was entirely in her character, but he kept the thought to himself.

  
“Have you gone and upset her again?” she demanded. Jeyne could not keep up with the state of romance at Riverrun. It was quite exhausting. If it wasn’t Alys mooning after Gendry, it was him gazing after Miss Arya, or it was Miss Arya herself acting as hot and cold as September days.

  
Gendry huffed, folding his arms over her chest, “Really?” 

“I don’t think you’ve a leg to stand on there, Waters,” she said sternly. Though she was of age with her, he felt like a small child under her gaze, no doubt a skill she’d honed with a rascal like Micah to care for.

“I haven’t spoken to her in a week, two weeks, so I’ve not a clue,” he replied curtly.

“Her mare’s gone,” said Hot Pie, joining them where they stood in front of the farmhouse. “What are the chances? Miss Arya’s not about and someone offs and steals her horse?”

  
“No Hot Pie, I rather think the mistress’s set off on her own,” said Gendry dryly. “I’ll help check for tracks, but I’ve a feeling she wouldn't want herself trailed.”

He and Lommy (for there was no love lost between Hot Pie and horses) had followed the tracks down the Kingsroad till it was deemed certain she was headed for Wendish Town. She’d been to visit her friend, was the accepted truth among the farmfolk for Alys had confirmed that Meera had made mention of the extended invitation. No one mentioned the strangeness of no note. But the sign to Seagard at the forked path did not escape Gendry’s notice and he returned to the farm uneasy. He feared what his words might have stirred in her.

_____

A week passed. The weather hovered between late summer and early autumn as if torn its purpose, unwilling to accept what was yet to come. It gave time the fickle pace of pouring syrup: some days it spilled out and he was absorbed entirely in his work; other days it dragged, leaving his head thick with unwelcome thoughts. 

This particular afternoon was thankfully true to the former. Gendry was in the field, a team of them erecting a new fence to replace the old. His mind was purely at the task at hand and he found himself blinking rapidly to adjust his focus on the figure of Lommy, running downhill towards them, skinny limbs flailing about. 

“She’s back, the mistress is back, only, not with Meera. They’re married—Miss Arya and Sergeant Targaryen,” said Lommy, wheezing still from running over into the paddock and clutching at his side.

Anguy let out a low whistle. “The scumbag,” he spat, never having warmed to Sergeant Targaryen, who’d bested him at cards once and threatened his place as the local Lothario every summer. It didn’t escape him, nor surprise him much, that Gendry had completely pallored at the news.

Anguy dropped his voice to speak to him, clapping him on the back. “I know I teased ye something cruel. For what it’s worth, she’s a foolish lass to pass you up, to my mind. But you’ll be alright you will, handsome man as yeself.” Though it was a rare moment of camaraderie, Gendry, who in any other circumstances might’ve been touched by Anguy’s words, at present all he felt was the grip of grief seizing his bones.

  
“There was nothing between us to pass up,” said Gendry roughly. His throat had gone dry. Everything quietened strangely till all he could hear was the steadying crescendo of his pulse, so loud, in his ears before it sped up into a frenzied staccato. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck as he tried to process the information Lommy had raced over with. He found himself short of breath and the pressure of his surroundings seemed to be closing in on him.

“Gendry,” called out Davos, noticing the change and setting down his tools, “Come, lad, I need ye’ help with summat.” 

Gendry was relieved for the exit, feeling his eyes begin to sting, he clenched his fist, nails digging into his palms painfully to distract himself.

He realised Davos was leading him to the Malthouse. He motioned Gendry in and sat him down at the long table as he fiddled about with glasses and bottles.

“Why’ve you brought me ‘ere,” said Gendry, completely dazed, his body having moved subconsciously at Davos’ behest. “Thought you wanted help with something?” 

Davos had placed a small tumbler of herbal firewater in front of him. “Drink this,” he said. “Calms the nerves.” Gendry picked it up and downed it in one. It scorched his throat, it was acridly bitter and sickly sweet at the same time, but he found the distraction a welcome one.

“I-ah, don’ know what ‘ter say. But I figured yeh’d need a spell to yourself, I know yeh care for the lass summat fierce. I think I wouldn’t be wrong ‘te guess there’s history there.”

“I proposed to her once, back when I had a flock of me ‘own,” said Gendry softly, gripping the cup tightly. “She’s always sayin’ she doesn’t want to marry,” said Gendry, his head hung. “And to him?” his voice boomed suddenly. “I-I think I need some fresh air,” he said, embarrassed at his outburst, rising from his chair, Davos’ mouth set into a sympathetic frown.

Gendry walked out of the Malthouse, he walked and walked, through the fields and the sparse, salted scrub that gave way to crumbling cliffs. He walked until he sat on the edge, looking down at the fleeting clouds of seaspray below as the waves crashed violently onto the shore. He covered his face with his hands and yelled, he yelled out all his frustration into the wind, which caught it and ferried it onwards and out to gods’ knows desolate where. His eyes stung with tears and he fell back onto the damp grass till his breath evened. He wept as the boy, alone, his mother gone; he wept as the grown man, alone, the only person he cherished since lost to him now, too.

Eventually he walked home, taking the long way through the drizzling rain, so that by the time he arrived he was bone cold and bone tired. He stripped off his clothes, leaving them in a pile and fell promptly into bed. Sleep came to him easily, but rest did not, for he dreamt strangely. He dreamt of laying down Arya, blessedly naked, into the soft sheets of a marriage bed, her dark hair fanned out around her and her grey eyes bright with lust. But just as he went to touch her, intending to lean in to kiss her and run his hands over the softness of her skin, she disappeared from underneath him. There, suddenly was Aegon Targaryen, sitting in the corner of the room on a chair, smiling wickedly at Gendry. Arya lay across his lap, passively, like an instrument, as he toyed with her absentmindedly: One of his hands stroked the thatch of the curls at the cleft of her thighs as the other squeezed her breast. She lay there staring at Gendry quizzically.

He woke abruptly with a gasp, trying to divine the question in her eyes, cock still thickened, breathing heavily and trying to shake the disturbing final image out of his head. He sighed heavily, and no matter how he tossed and turned, sleep would not come again. Guiltily, he reached down to stroke himself, hoping it would give him relief. He tried, vainly, to think of Alys, of how it’d felt to kiss her—but his mind replaced his train of thought with the image of a naked Arya beneath him, except this time it was him with his fingers between her legs as one hand cupped her breast, and instead of looking at him blankly, she called out his name, arching her back and moaning his name pleasure. He came quickly, with a relieved cry. Reaching for his discarded, still-soaked shirt from where he had peeled it off before bed, he wiped himself clean, feeling foolish and ashamed of himself and lonelier than he’d ever been. 


End file.
